Subj : Newsline Part 2 To : All From : Daryl Stout Date : Thu Mar 09 2017 10:34 pm 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. Posted by VPost v1.7.081019 .