Better Internet Time Syncronisation  for WSPR - Windows XP
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Introduction
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The WSPR 2 manual points out the importance of having your PC clock set accurately. Many operators apparently use third party utilities (eg Dimesion 4 for windows) to syncronise with an internet time service.

By default, windows XP is only aware of two time servers:

time.windows.com
time.nist.gov

and it only synchronises once a week. 

Surely there is a better way?

Oh yes, there is!


NTP servers - Let's have more choice
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The Network Time Protocol project (www.ntp.org) has quite an interesting website on the subject, and http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/use.html is a particularly useful page. There is a wordwide pool of NTP servers (pool.ntp.org)  that are avaliable for public use. If you choose to use this facility, their system picks randomly from a pool of servers that are geographicly close to you. However, you'll get better results by using the sub-zone for your continent (europe.pool.ntp.org in my case) or even the your country-specific pool (eg uk.pool.ntp.org). There are apparently over 110 servers in the UK alone.

So, for my purposes, I have chosen to add uk.pool.ntp.org to my Windows XP system.

There are 2 ways to do this.


The Simple Way
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When logged in as administrator, you can double-click on the clock on the right hand end of the taskbar to bring up the "Date and Time Properties" window. Click on the "Internet Time" tab and then simply type the address for your chosen time server in the "server" box, then click "Apply". Presto! It now appears in your drop-down list. Now you can hit the "Update Now" button and windows will go off and sync with your chosen server.


The More Difficult Way
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This method uses the Windows Registry Editor. The usual heath warning applies. YOU CAN CAUSE SERIOUS DAMAGE TO YOUR WINDOWS SYSTEM IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFUL. Now, deep breath and let's do it...

1) Fire up the registry editor  (click on start | Run... then type regedit and hit enter)
2) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers
3) In there, you'll have the following 3 entries:

     Name       Type       Data
     (Default)  REG_SZ     1
     1          REG_SZ     time.windows.com
     2          REG_SZ     time.nst.gov

   The REG_SZ bits means that each of the values are "strings". The entries 1 and 2 are the
   lines that appear in the drop-down. All we need to do is add another line and change the
   (Default) value accordingly.
4) Right click in the space under the values and choose "NEW>" and then "String value".
5) Type the next number for the new entry. "3" in my case (don't type the quotes), then hit    enter.
6) Now double click on the line you just created and, in the "value data" box, type the    address for the time server you want to use. "uk.pool.ntp.org" in my case. Then click    "OK".
7) Now double click on the (Default) line and change the value to match the "name" of the    line you just created.
8) My list now looks like this:

     Name       Type       Data
     (Default)  REG_SZ     3
     1          REG_SZ     time.windows.com
     2          REG_SZ     time.nst.gov
     3          REG_SZ     uk.pool.ntp.org

9) Don't close regedit just yet....


Tell Windows to syncronise more often
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You'll need to edit another registry key to tell Windows how often to syncronise. So if you ducked out of using regedit to edit your time server list above, then you'll need to fire it up anyway (see instruction 1 above)

10) Navigate to         HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
11) Find the SpecialPollInterval value. This is a REG_DWORD type, and is probably set to         604800, which is the number of seconds in a week. 
12) Double click on it, click "decimal" in the "base" box, then change the "value data" to       the number of seconds you want between updates. (3600 is every hour, 86400 would be         every 24 hours, but you can choose any period you want  ( 40993 for 11hrs, 23 min, 13        seconds, for example). Hit "OK", then close the registry editor.

If you have a problem updating your time, it's probably your firewall. Windows firewall doesn't usually block time server updates.

I've got my system updating itself avery 4 hours. Perhaps a bit over the top, but easily achievable with no additional software to install.

Regards

Jeff Moye
G7TAT