WWV Had 100 Year Celebration

NIST’s WWV radio station had a 100 Year Celebration on October 1^st at their Ft. Collins, Colorado site. There they invited Radio Amateurs to set up and operate their radios for a few days. They communicated on at least 20, 30, 40 and 160 meter bands using WW0WWV as their call sign.

http://wwv100.com/

https://qrznow.com/wwv-100th-anniversary-special-event-operation-in-the-planning-stages/

The site has been closed to the public for many years. For this event they permitted 100 invited guests to participate in refreshments, presentations about WWV history and technical stuff, and a tour of the WWV transmitter building. I was one of those guests. The presentations were in a large tent near the building, where there was a large display connected to a computer. It was quite interesting, though I had to stand with several others at the back since all seats were taken.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/events/2019/10/nist-radio-station-wwv-100-year-anniversary

I had wanted a tour for many years but didn’t think I would get one once I retired. The tour was done in groups of 10. The tour was good though incomplete. We saw only the front panels of the transmitters from the hallways, not the insides. We also were not shown the room with the 4 cesium-beam frequency standards. I believe these are compared with better standards at Boulder, Colorado. We were shown a room where the voice for the time announcement is now automated and another with antique equipment. Then they took us outside and up some steps to see the antenna towers. There we saw a tower for each of the broadcast frequencies: 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 MHz. They are vertical dipole antennas. The idea is that you should be able to hear one of those frequencies anywhere in the world at any time.

There were also two towers that are wideband and can be used for any of those frequencies. The upper part of the guywires are transmitting elements. A special horizontal crossed dipole is there that will be used for atmospheric research by transmitting different polarizations every 15 minutes.

https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/radio-stations/wwv

We also did not tour the WWVB building on the same site. This station is the one that sets all the “atomic clocks” that you can buy with its 60 KHz signal. The antenna is a vertical wire that connects to an impressive “top-hat” arrangement that is huge. The towers holding up this top-hat (which is a capacitor to ground for tuning the antenna) can be seen from highway 1 without going down the road to the NIST site.

https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/radio-stations/wwvb