ShackDeck
Sign in
Download Free Now
What to listen to · Time signals
WWV 5 MHz: the night frequency of the Fort Collins time signal
WWV on 5000 kHz, the frequency that works after dark, when the higher ones have faded. Same ticks, tones and voice as on 10 MHz, with RWM from Moscow and BPM from China as close neighbours on the dial.
What you hear
The programme is the one described in the main article: ticks, the minute tone, the voice reading Coordinated Universal Time, the geophysical alert in minute 18. On 5 MHz there is more static, especially in summer evenings with thunderstorms about, and the ticks sit in a soft crackle rather than in silence.
Who transmits and why
NIST, from Fort Collins, Colorado. The 5 MHz outlet is the night workhorse: in daylight the lower ionosphere absorbs it within a few hundred kilometres, after sunset it covers the whole continent. Several other national time stations use the same round frequency, among them BPM in China, and the Russian RWM transmits just 4 kHz lower on 4996 kHz, so a wide filter on 5000 may show two or three time standards at once.
When and where to listen
From dusk to dawn at the receiver's end, across the United States and Canada; the hours after midnight are the most reliable. Across the Atlantic it is a difficult catch and succeeds mostly on long winter nights, when the whole path is dark and the band is quiet. In daylight the frequency is empty of WWV, and 10 or 15 MHz take over.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Time signals → WWV 5 MHz. The program picks a public receiver that hears 5000 kHz, tunes it in AM and shows the waterfall; nothing of your own is needed. If a Chinese voice appears instead of the English one, the receiver is on the Asian side and you are hearing BPM.