> But aren't we losing sight of what Jinx wants to do?

The conversation has wandered a little but I'm still in the
market for a solution. Presently I'm waiting for answers
to queries to govt agencies. I will post what I find out and
decide to do as I'm sure it will be useful to others

> I think he's already seen that the power line isn't good enough
> at any one point in time

That was a disappointment - surprisingly rough

> 1 - Buy a frequency reference
> for a few 1000 $, but that sounds like rather overkill

For the value of this product and expected profit, yes

> 2 - Pick up your local radio time standard transmission

I'm waiting for an answer from RadioNZ on that one

http://www.gpsclock.com/specs.html

"It is not like the radio 'atomic' clocks that are accurate to
half a second or so" - true or ad spin ?

> 3 - Use a GPS that puts out a time signal

I've an on-going project that may involve GPS. If so, that
would be a convenient solution at that time. If not, I'm not
sure I'd want to buy anything that will get used just once.
Although I could tlook around for one to borrow. But I've
been doing a little surfing

http://tufi.alphalink.com.au/time/time_gps.html

One of the links includes the following warning -

"It has been reported by users in the USA, New Zealand and
Australia that the LCD time display on most, if not all, handheld
GPS receivers can be late by as much as 1 or 2 seconds.  This
can be readily shown by comparing the LCD display on a
handheld GPS receiver with a source of known accurate time,
such as WWV, telephone or true GPS time"

For the moment I'll just see what's available free. As MRL
promote their standards as being for exactly what I'm trying
to do, I've asked them for more information

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