RIP: Canadian Broadcast Corporation's time signal announcement, just shy of its 84th anniversary

[thewayne]

The CBC began broadcasting a time signal on its shortwave station CHU on November 5th, 1939, the same year that it joined World War 1 and six years before the USA began broadcasting its time signal on their shortwave station WWV. The CBC Radio One time broadcast was discontinued unexpectedly earlier this month on October 9th. The reasons stated was that the Radio One broadcast is received through a number of means, including satellite reception, that can induce lag of several seconds, and in critical applications this cannot be relied upon.

You can still listen to CHU if you have a shortwave receiver and can pick up its signal, it broadcasts on 3.33, 7.85 and 14.67 MHz, and are heard through central/eastern Canada and the eastern United States. More info on the station at https://www.radioworld.com/global/chu-canadas-time-station. One thing that I find interesting is they regularly send out QSL cards! (something that only ham radio geeks would be interested in)

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/canadas-84-year-radio-time-check-has-stopped-because-of-accuracy-concerns/


For the science fiction geeks amongst us, the sound of CHU's time signal's Morse code broadcast was used for the sound of the Rebel's radar signal in The Empire Strike's Back! It's embedded in the Battle of Hoth scene.

https://swling.com/blog/tag/the-empire-strikes-back/

Comments

[acelightning73]

I'm pretty sure it's already set to that. But I need to have my wristwatch as exact as I can get it. Working in radio, I needed to make sure we broadcast the network news precisely on the hour, when it was sent over the network. Joining it in progress sounded very sloppy even to the audience.

The trouble with the Canadian signal it it's not momentary, like a beep.