WWV: THE DAY THAT TIME STOOD STILL
STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Daylight Saving Time, which starts Sunday, March 12,
confuses lots of people - at least temporarily. But radio station WWV had
another issue recently with keeping. Here's Newsline's Neil Rapp, WB9VPG.
NEIL's REPORT: Radio Station WWV, operated by the United States National
Institute of Standards and Technology, continually transmits the current
time on several frequencies from just outside Fort Collins, Colorado.
If you tuned into WWV recently, and it seems they disappeared... well, it wasn't
another David Copperfield TV special. WWV was off the air recently
for installation of a 250 kVA backup generator. Matt Deutch, N0RGT, is the chief
engineer at WWV, and explains what took place.
MATT: We've had the same diesel generator to back up WWV since 1967, 68
something like that, and it worked wonderfully for us, but over the years,
it has slowly started to accumulate its problems. And, the reliability was
in question. It was having trouble starting sometimes, especially when we needed
it, and so the division scraped together some money, and said let's
get a new generator. So we've installed a new generator. The testing isn't
done quite yet. We're still in the midst of... Cummins is gonna test it...
but we've run it. We have a new automatic transfer switch, and we're hoping
to do a load test next week, and transfer it onto the building, also and
make sure everything works okay.
NEIL: Matt further explains what took place instead of the expected two
days of service outage that was anticipated.
MATT: That was to pull the new cable through the conduit... put in new
conduit, and pull cable through it, and reconnect it to the distribution
panel. So, it was just for safety measure for the workers to work on that
equipment. And, it went a lot faster than we thought it would, which is
good. And so, we just had two short outages instead of the day long
outages like we had anticipated.
NEIL: So for the couple of weeks until the testing is complete, WWV is
running without a backup generator. And ironically, that's exactly the
time that an unexpected outage took place.
MATT: We did have one outage that was unscheduled. We need the generator
about once every five years. And, we did have a snow storm last week, and
one of our outages was unplanned. We didn't have a backup generator, and
sure enough, we lost power. We were off the air for about two hours
without a backup generator.
NEIL: The generator will be fully functional soon, and WWV will be back
to being all time, all the time. And, it sure was fun to call WWV and ask, "What
time is it?" But alas, it's happened many times before.
Reporting for Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, in
Bloomington, Indiana.
**
A MEDAL FOR HER MORSE CODE
STEPHEN/ANCHOR: A 90-year-old former Morse Code operator in the UK, has
just been honored for her World War 2 service, as we learn from Newsline's
Jeremy Boot, G4NJH.
JEREMY: A World War II wireless operator, who used her Morse Code skills
transmitting coded messages between India and England, has been awarded
a war medal recognizing her service. Diana O'Brien is now 90 years old.
She was 17, and her name was Diana Ballantyne when she joined the First
Aid Nursing Yeomanry in 1944. She'd decided to help the war effort even
more by learning Morse Code, and working as a wireless operator.
She trained at Henley-on-Thames and Bletchley Park, but was eventually
posted to India, where she worked in Delhi and then Calcutta, transmitting coded
messages back to England, supporting troops behind enemy lines in
Burma. She returned to the UK in October of 1945, and eventually married,
and settled in the Lake District.
The Mayor of Shrewsbury, where Diana has lived since 2015, presented her
recently with the campaign War Medal 1939-1945.
Her family told the Westmorland Gazette that her spirit for public service
stayed with her even after the war. Before moving into a residential care
home, she volunteered for a number of local organizations, including the Women's
Royal Voluntary Service, the League of Friends at Westmorland
County Hospital, the Red Cross, the Victoria League, and the Women's
Institute.
And yes, her family says, she still remembers Morse Code.
For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jeremy Boot, G4NJH.
(THE WESTMORLAND GAZETTE)
***
BREAK HERE:
Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio Newsline,
heard on bulletin stations around the world, including W4GS, the Grand
Strand Amateur Radio Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on Sundays at
8 p.m.
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