Tag Archives: Bureau of Standards

Stability, Accuracy, Purity – The “1929-Type” Station

Posted on by June 2, 2021
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Hiram Percy Maxim long considered precise frequency control to be the biggest challenge in amateur radio.1 All at once it was set to become everyone’s concern when the new international treaty would take effect in 1929. “As we climb up into the super frequencies, as we do when we use forty meters and below, frequency precision becomes a problem of the first magnitude,” he wrote in Summer 1928. But he was certain that amateurs could devise new techniques and figure … Continue reading →

WWV

Posted on by June 2, 2021
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At the ARRL’s request in the summer of 1923, the Bureau of Standards announced that it would begin a schedule of broadcasts on precise wavelengths so that amateurs could calibrate their wave meters and receivers.1 The Bureau’s station in Washington, D.C., ran a highly stable oscillator driving a one-kilowatt power amplifier and had a proven record of being heard over a wide area, even on the West Coast. In print its call sign, WWV, evokes the graphical visualization of a … Continue reading →

Transpacifics

Posted on by June 2, 2021
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Steadily increasing use of CW paralleled exploration of ever shorter wavelengths, and the two pursuits complemented each other. Amateurs were setting new records at a whirlwind pace. CW use in traffic handling had grown tremendously in the past year, and in June 1922 ARRL message traffic on CW exceeded that on spark for the first time.1 By the following February CW traffic accounted for nearly 90% of the total.2 Hams across the country found CW especially effective in summer when … Continue reading →

QSS Tests

Posted on by June 2, 2021
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Never having observed the effects of a complete solar cycle on signals before, or at least not having paid attention to them, hams continued to be impressed, intrigued, and puzzled by the changing on-air conditions as the minimum approached, still two years away as the new decade began. At least one thing was clear: Radio waves didn’t simply move from point to point along a straight line and decrease in strength with distance.  Something else was happening too, but what? … Continue reading →

Freaks

Posted on by June 2, 2021
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The uneven, partly unpredictable nature of radio wave propagation continued to fascinate hams during and after the war. The solar cycle had peaked around 1917, just in time for hams to miss it because of the war shutdown.  Now, with the next solar minimum little more than two years away, hams had just gone through the first winter season of prime-time operating since the reopening—and had begun to notice some peculiarities and marked differences in signals from when they last … Continue reading →