Do radio-controlled/ “atomic” watches really work?
Putting them In Colorado usually works pretty well. Seriously, I’ve used a couple of different self-setting clocks that use that signal. From San Diego it isn’t all that easy to pick up. Having the receiver near an east-facing window seems to work best. Except for outside – that works even better, but isn’t really where I need the clock. n.b.: The 60 kHz signal does not travel “around the world.” The watch of course will keep running but it’s extremely unlikely you’ll ever pick up WWVB more than about 2000 miles from Fort Collins. Europe and other continents have their own longwave time standard stations on other frequencies and a few of the available radio watches do “listen” to some of them in addition to WWVB. Longwave depends on ground wave and this propagates best at night – unfortunately if you are very far west or east from Ft. Collins *it is not night at the same time all along the path!* So trying to pick up the signal “at night” in Europe, or from Europe when it’s night in Ft
