Recording the 2015 Leap Second
Yesterday, I posted a brief article about the leap second that occurred between 23:59:59 June 30, 2015 and 00:00:00 UTC July 01, 2015.
I decided to record the leap second on as many shortwave time station frequencies as possible. The only viable options for me-based on time of day and my reception location-were the WWV frequencies 10, 15, 20, and 25 MHz, and CHU frequencies 7,850 and 14,670 kHz.
I was able to monitor four different time station frequencies simultaneously on the TitanSDR Pro. (click to enlarge)
Unfortunately, HF propagation was very poor yesterday, so the higher WWV frequencies-20 and 25 MHz-were completely inaudible, as was CHU on 14,670 kHz. There were numerous thunderstorms in our area, so static crashes were prevalent.
Still, since this was a first attempt to record a "leap second," I didn't want to take any chances. I had the Titan SDR Pro monitoring and recording two CHU and two WWV frequencies [screenshot], the Elad FDM-S2 recording WWV on 15 MHz [screenshot], and the WinRadio Excalibur on WWV's 10 MHz frequency, as well as recording the whole 31 meter band spectrum [screenshot].
In the end, the strongest frequencies I captured were CHU on 7,850 kHz and WWV on 15,000 kHz. WWV on 10,000 kHz was much weaker than normal and the band was quite noisy-still, it's readable, so I included this recording, too. Recordings follow"
Recordings
The sign above WWV's primary 10 MHz transmitter (2014).
All of the recordings start just before the announcement of 23:59 UTC.
WWV added the extra second and higher tone, then continued with their top of the hour announcements, including a note about leap second (which begins after the 00:04 announcement). CHU simply injects a one second silence before the long tone.
WWV on 15,000 kHz using the Elad FDM-S2:
https://archive.org/download/WWVLeapSecond15000kHz201506302FDMS2CLIP/WWV-LeapSecond-15000kHz-2015_06_30-2-FDMS2-CLIP.mp3CHU on 7,850 kHz using the TitanSDR Pro:
https://archive.org/download/WWVLeapSecond15000kHz201506302FDMS2CLIP/CHU-LeapSecond-2015-06-30_23'46'35_0-CLIP.mp3WWV on 10,000 kHz using the WinRadio Excalibur:
https://archive.org/download/WWVLeapSecond15000kHz201506302FDMS2CLIP/WWV-LeapSecond-10MHz-30JUNE2015-WinRadExcal.mp3One interesting note about the 10 MHz WWV recording above: I believe I may be hearing BPM China in the background. I'm curious if anyone can confirm this because I don't know BPM's cadence/pattern well enough to ID it.
Other recordings"?Did you record a shortwave time station as leap second happened? If so, please comment, and feel free to share a link to your recording!