YVTO is the callsign of the official time signal from the Juan Manuel Cagigal Naval Observatory in

Caracas Caracas ( , ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern p ...

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

. The content of YVTO's signal, which is a continuous 1 kW amplitude modulated carrier wave at 5.000

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

, is much simpler than that broadcast by some of the other time signal stations around the world, such as WWV. The methods of time transmission from YVTO are very limited. The broadcast employs no form of digital time code. The time of day is given in Venezuelan Standard Time (VET), and is only sent using

Spanish language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

voice announcements. YVTO also transmits 100 ms-long beeps of 1,000 Hz every second, except for thirty seconds past the minute. The top of the minute is marked by a 0.5 second 800 Hz tone. The station previously broadcast on 6.100 MHz but appears to have changed to the current frequency by 1990.QSL information pages: YVTO
shows 5000 kHz reception in September 1990.

References

Standard Frequency and Time Signal Stations on Longwave and Shortwave, page 26 (PDF)
This link is no longer valid. {{Time measurement and standards Time signal radio stations