Hi Sean,

> I am building a WWVB receiver for [...] class
>
> First of all, can anyone who has a WWVB receiver or self-setting
> clock tell me if you have received a WWVB signal in the last 12
> hours (from 9:00 until 21:00 Wednesday 18 April UTC)? They have
> been doing antenna repairs lately and have had some outages, so
> it is possible that they have been off the air.

http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/stations/wwvboutages.htm
lists station outages.  Latest one listed was 4-14-1.  Don't
know how long it takes them to update that page after they have
an outage.

I personally don't know if they are currently on-air or not.

> Secondly, my understanding is that in most of the continental
> US, WWVB is received through ground-wave propagation (it's at
> 60kHz) which should have no problem entering a valley which is
> several miles wide, right?

I'd expect you'd be able to receive the signal.

Have you tried checking the signal by going to a local Radio
Shack store and forcing one of they WWVB based clocks into a
hunt for signal mode?  The one I own shows current signal
strength when forced (i.e. power cycled or toggled to auto-off
then to auto-on) for about 2 minutes as it's trying to acquire
signal.  Is there a RS in the valley with you?

                                                Lee

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