Radio Controlled Clock MSF Time Signal

Highland76

andyt8 wrote: »

Quite agree - Rugby was a better location for us in the south of England, I expect those in north Scotland prefer Anthorn up on the English Scottish border.

Living in the Highlands we now get more reliable updates on all our radio controlled clocks than we used to when the clocks were being synced from Rugby. So there's at least 1 person who's happy that the time updates are now coming from Cumbria

Andy_L

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

The hugely expensive Galileo European time and navigation satellite system went off line recently for several days due to a ground station problem. GPS can be spoofed and jammed, try that on a 60 KHz signal. There is a marine navigation high reliability alternative to GPS, it’s called eLoran and also uses old fashioned low frequencies.

MSF might be old tech, but it works reliably and is under UK control.

I'm unaware of any specific immunity that a 60kHz broadcast has to jamming/spoofing compared to the ~100MHz that GPS uses

coffeehound

Andy_L wrote: »

I'm unaware of any specific immunity that a 60kHz broadcast has to jamming/spoofing compared to the ~100MHz that GPS uses

Well it's certainly less vulnerable to solar flare activity

Frozen_up_north

Andy_L wrote: »

I'm unaware of any specific immunity that a 60kHz broadcast has to jamming/spoofing compared to the ~100MHz that GPS uses

The low frequencies that MSF and eLoran use need large antennas and power levels of the order of Kilowatts. GPS signals are very weak compared to the huge signals received from those low frequency transmitters. GPS jammers are fairly common and can be pocket size, they have been used to try and stop car tracking. The Royal Navy ran GPS jamming exercises off the west coast to the annoyance of fishermen.

Critical infrastructure that relies on GPS is vulnerable to jamming and is of such concern to the US Government that they mandated the introduction of eLoran. Some of the background legislation is listed at:

https://www.gps.gov/policy/legislation/loran-c/

Only the foolish use GPS for location and timing without a backup. GPS should not be relied upon for critical infrastructure applications.

BTW, GPS uses UHF signals in the 1100 MHz to 1500 MHz range. MSF uses 60 KHz and eLoran 100 KHz.