[bars] WSJT-X tip

[William Smith]

Lots of options, I built a local NTP server on a Raspberry Pi to distribute the time to everything on the LAN (not sure if, for example, Field Day folks set up a LAN or not).

Depending on your OS, and hardware capabilities, there are lots of options for connecting a GPS "puck" to an individual computer to sync the time from GPS.  There are some gotchas (USB pucks may not have PPS, without a PPS hardware line you may not get very good accuracy, and the 'time' sentence from GPS is the one _after_ the PPS, and GPS can be off by many seconds while it's booting up), but they can all be accounted for.

There are also programs for various OSen that will look at the decoded dT and correct for your difference from the mean, once you visually get the time within a few seconds of realtime.

https://time.is/ Will also tell you how close you are to realtime.

73, Willie N1JBJ

> On Aug 9, 2023, at 6:06 AM, Jonathan Lyna via bars <bars at w1hh.org> wrote:
> 
> What about the people that want an external hardware device to sync their clock to something like a GPS satellite (an atomic clock in the sky, instead of an atomic clock at the end of a wire)?   A method that uses this would be portable, wouldn't it?   Of course you could sync the clock before you head out manually, or have it always "good to go"  automatically,  but what if you want to synchronize using radio waves, before you FT8 over radio waves?  A fully "wireless" solution.
> 
> Could you make a GPS dongle work in these cases?
> 
> Jon 
> 
> On Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 08:20:09 PM EDT, Juan Jiménez <k1cpr at bd5.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Considering that most of our members are older, I think the "set it and forget it" method is much more reasonable than having to remember to sync. It will also help with any other app that requires an accurate clock.
> 
> 73,
> K1CPR
> Juan
> 
> 
> On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 8:09 PM Christopher Wood <christopher.wood at firelinkllc.com <mailto:christopher.wood at firelinkllc.com>> wrote:
> Yes, this method works. However, if you're just an occasional FT-8 (JS8Call, etc.) user (like me), you can skip the regedit method and just sync when necessary through the following:
> 
> Right-click on the clock
> Left-click "Adjust date/time" (usually near the top)
> On the Date & time screen (you may have to scroll down a bit) and left-click on the "Sync now" button
> Your clock only needs to be with about 500 msec of UTC.
> 
> This site www.time.gov <http://www.time.gov/> will give you a good estimate of the difference between your clock and UTC (the system corrects for network delays).
> 
> Good luck,
> Christopher KC1GHR
> From: bars <bars-bounces at w1hh.org <mailto:bars-bounces at w1hh.org>> on behalf of Juan Jiménez <k1cpr at bd5.com <mailto:k1cpr at bd5.com>>
> Sent: Saturday, August 5, 2023 6:41 PM
> To: w1hh <bars at w1hh.org <mailto:bars at w1hh.org>>
> Subject: [bars] WSJT-X tip
>  
> One thing FT-8 is sensitive to is your computer's clock, which has to be accurately sync'd with a time server. If you are running on Windows, the default is to update your clock once a week using the NTP protocol and a Microsoft time server. WSJT-X recommends installing software to update more often, but that's not necessary. It's easier to use Regedit. The key to change the auto time sync time interval settings is located at:
> 
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
> 
> The key name is SpecialPollInterval and the type is DWORD. The default value is 604800 (decimal) or 0x00093a80 (hexadecimal). That number is the seconds between update. Change the value to 86400 to auto time sync every day. Don't make it much shorter than that or you risk getting blocked for swamping the server with requests. This works on all versions of Windows back to XP.
> 
> Windows uses NTP, not SNTP, and you can also change the NTP server it uses here:
> 
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters
> 
> ...in the NTPServer key.
> 
> 73,
> K1CPR
> Juan


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