Zvi:
There's a lot of important information missing in this message. Are you using time.gov or some other source of "Internet time?"
time.gov is fairly sophisticated. It measures
the round-trip delay to your computer and adjusts your computer's display to do an electronic version of Watch Error, so the for any reasonable Internet connection it should be accurate to a fraction of a second.
Radio clocks do not necessarily constantly adjust themselves, so the difference you are seeing may be the clock running without synchronizing back to WWVB.
Have you tried getting a "third opinion?" WWV or CHU? Although others have given counter-examples in other locations, I find that Verizon Wireless
gives very accurate time in the SF Bay area where I'm located. I just checked and it's dead on with time.gov. (BTW, your computer's clock is not necessarily an accurate source -- it synchronizes to the "mother ship" very infrequently and may drift significantly in between)
From: Zvi <zvidoron@btinternet.com>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Friday, March 2, 2012 11:00 AM
Subject:
[NavList] Radio Clock or Internet GMT - which should I believe?
I have been using GMT provided over the Internet (via Wi-Fi) to set my time
pieces by for celestial navigation, but when compared to a radio clock (AccTim
Galaxias) the two time sources seem to differ, mostly by a second or two but
sometimes by up to 5 seconds. Intuitively I would have thought that the radio
clock would be the stable and accurate one and that the Internet GMT, delivered
to a laptop or to a smartphone via Wi-Fi would suffer short delays and
inconsistencies. Any thoughts or experience?
