Mana | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

The answer to both is Yes … and Kekaha on Kauai has the distinction of being one of only two official Time broadcast points in the United States (the other is in Fort Collins, Colorado.)

At first, I thought “Time” was a pretty simple thing. Oh yeah, every now and then we need to mentally add or subtract an extra hour between points on the continent for time zone changes – and most folks there need to adjust for “Daylight” or not – but in looking into the Kauai operation, I quickly learned that there are many variables of “Time.”

OK, let’s fast forward past the daylight-darkness, sundial, wind-up and quartz watch timing eras … nowadays, transportation, communication, financial transactions, manufacturing, electric power and many other technologies have become dependent on accurate clocks; folks need to be more accurate than being “about” a certain time.

In addition, some folks need time referenced to the Earth’s rotation for applications such as celestial navigation, satellite observations of the Earth and some types of surveying. For those folks, Time relative to the motion of the Earth is more important than the accuracy of the atomic clock (even though Earth time fluctuates by a few thousandths of a second a day.)

For the rest of us, highly accurate atomic clocks and the agreement in 1967 on what a “second” is (the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation associated with a specified transition of the cesium atom) led to a compromise time scale of the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC.)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST – an agency of the US Department of Commerce) laboratories in Boulder, Colorado does the computing for us and even broadcasts the UTC(NIST) via various means. (UTC(NIST) is the US national standard for measurements of time-of-day, time interval and frequency.

Here’s the official statement on what they do: “UTC(NIST) is the coordinated universal time scale maintained at NIST. The UTC(NIST) time scale comprises an ensemble of cesium beam and hydrogen maser atomic clocks, which are regularly calibrated by the NIST primary frequency standard. The number of clocks in the time scale varies, but is typically around ten.”

“The outputs of the clocks are combined into a single signal by using a weighted average. The most stable clocks are assigned the most weight. The clocks in the UTC(NIST) time scale also contribute to the International Atomic Time (TAI) and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).”

“UTC(NIST) serves as a national standard for frequency time interval, and time-of-day. It is distributed through the NIST time and frequency services and continuously compared to the time and frequency standards located around the world.”

Whoa, that’s waaay more information than I needed; … and, I think you are confusing me with someone who cares. (Short answer, those guys “keep” the time.) OK, let’s move on.

If you really want to know what Time it is, go to http://nist.time.gov , select your desired time zone in the US and the time will be displayed for you.

Or, call to hear the “Time” broadcasts by dialing (303) 499-7111 for WWV (Colorado) and (808) 335-4363 for WWVH (Hawaiʻi).

These are not toll-free numbers; callers outside the local calling area are charged for the call at regular long-distance rates. The telephone time-of-day service is used to synchronize clocks and watches and for the calibration of stopwatches and timers. It receives about 2,000 calls per day.

OK, back to Kauai.

At Kokole Point at Mānā, Kauai, the NIST radio station WWVH broadcasts time and frequency information 24 hours per day, 7 days per week to listeners worldwide. (These are the guys who “tell” the time.)

The information broadcast by WWVH includes time announcements, standard time intervals, standard frequencies, UT1 time corrections (time derived by astronomers who monitor the speed of the Earth’s rotation,) a BCD time code (time data is coded binary coded decimal (BCD) digits in the form HH:MM:SS:FF,) geophysical alerts, marine storm warnings and Global Positioning System (GPS) status reports.

Voice announcements are made from WWVH once every minute. The announced time is “Coordinated Universal Time” (UTC). Coordination with the international UTC time scale keeps NIST time signals in close agreement with signals from other time and frequency stations throughout the world.

UTC differs from local time by the number of time zones between your location and the zero meridian (which passes through Greenwich, England.) (In Hawaiʻi, it’s UTC – 10 (the online and telephone time broadcasts are calibrated for Hawaiʻi.))

UTC is a 24-hour clock system. When local time changes from Daylight Saving to Standard Time, or vice versa, UTC does not change. However, the difference between UTC and local time may change by 1-hour. UTC runs at an almost perfectly constant rate, since its rate is based on cesium atomic frequency standards.

In addition to the time-related data, NOAA uses WWVH to broadcast geophysical alert messages that provide information about solar terrestrial conditions. Marine storm warnings are broadcast for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. The National Weather Service provides the storm warning information. (This information is broadcast at specific time intervals in each hour.)

Another critical function of the WWV system (especially for Hawaiʻi) is keeping the clocks on the GPS satellites in sync. GPS technology requires very accurate timekeeping as the difference in radio signal arrival is a big part of fixing your location. Without WWVH, the GPS system would drift off and lots of transportation and related functions would be affected (airplanes, ships, self-driving cars, etc.)

WWVH began operation on November 22, 1948 at Kihei on the island of Maui (the site now houses the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary offices.) In July 1971, the station moved to its current location, near Kekaha, Kauai.

For those wondering why these two facilities, that are west of the Mississippi River, have call signs that start with “W” (typically, station call signs west of the Mississippi start with “K” and those east start with “W,”) the time station’s early location was in Washington, DC (May 1920) – when it moved to Fort Collins (1966,) it kept the call sign. For consistency, Kauai followed the call sign pattern.

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Mānā is a coastal plain with an ancient sea cliff at its inner edge, which extends from Waimea in the south to the north on the western shores of Kauaʻi.

Throughout prehistory, large areas of the Mānā Plain were covered by the great Mānā wetlands, allowing native Hawaiians to canoe as far south as Waimea.

The Legend of Barking Sands suggests there was an old Hawaiian fisherman who lived in a hut near the beach with his nine dogs. During his fishing trips he would tie his dogs to stakes in the sand, three to each of three stakes. He would then get into his canoe and go fishing.

One day while he was at sea and the dogs were tied as usual, he was caught in a very bad storm. For hours he battled the heavy seas until he was finally able to return to land. He was so exhausted that he crawled to his hut, forgetting to untie his dogs.

When he awoke the next morning and went outside, the dogs were nowhere in sight. All he saw were three small mounds of sand where the dogs had been tied. As he stepped on one of the mounds, he heard a low bark. Another step brought another bark; he still couldn’t find the dogs.

Believing the dogs had been buried in the sand because of the storm the day before, the fisherman began to dig. As each shovel full was removed, more sand took its place. He finally gave up, and every day after that when he crossed the beach he could hear the low barking.

The dogs were never found, and to this day the sands of Mānā have been known as Barking Sands.

The scientific explanation of these sounds from the sands is that the grains of Mānā sand are tiny, hollow spheres. When rubbed together, the give off a popping sound similar to the barking of dogs. This only occurs when the sand is very dry. Wet sand gives off almost no sound.

Up until the mid-1880s, the great Mānā wetlands, east of the plain, covered large areas of the lowlands. Approximately 1,700-acres of permanent, semi-permanent and seasonal wetlands were present on the Mānā Plain.

After the arrival of Europeans to the island, aquaculture transitioned to agriculture through the eventual draining of the wetlands and the cultivation of sugar cane and rice.

One of the first European settlers, Valdemar Knudsen, drained a portion of the Mānā wetlands be excavating a ditch through to the ocean a Waiele. The first sugarcane was planted in Kekaha in 1878.

The area is now home to farmers and a military facility that is known as the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF.)

PMRF is a test and evaluation facility for Ballistic Missile Defense programs. It is the world’s largest instrumented multi-environment range capable of supporting surface, subsurface, air and space operations simultaneously.

There are over 1,100-square miles of instrumented underwater range and over 42,000-square miles of controlled airspace.

In 1921, the land area known as the Barking Sands was acquired by the Kekaha Sugar Company. This area became a runway for private planes. In 1932, Australian pilot Kingsford Smith completed a historic flight from Barking Sands to Australia in his Ford Trimotor.

In 1940, the US Army acquired the land, naming the installation Mana Airport and paving the runway. In 1941, the Army acquired additional acreage, giving Mana Airport a total of 2,058-acres. Private airlines frequently utilized the airport and during World War II there were a great deal of military flight operations there.

In 1954 the base was officially designated Bonham Air Force Base.

The US Navy’s first began operations at Bonham in 1956, testing its Regulus I missile. Soon after, in 1958, the Pacific Missile Range Facility was established in order to support the growing demand of the Navy at Bonham.

In 1964, the Pacific Missile Range Facility and Bonham were transferred to the Navy, becoming Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands.

In 2004, when I was at DLNR, an Agricultural Preservation Initiative (API) was approved by the State of Hawai‘i Board of Land and Natural Resources.

The API provides a buffer to PMRF and ensures that land on the Mānā Plain owned by the State of Hawai‘i and leased to the Agribusiness Development Corporation remains as agricultural lands (the agreement runs to 2030.)

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071106-N-0000X-003 KAUAI, Hawaii (Nov. 6, 2007) – A threat representative target is launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) to be intercepted as part of a Missile Defense Agency test of the sea-based capability under development. This was part of a multiple simultaneous engagement involving two ballistic missile targets that were intercepted about 250 miles from Kauai and approximately 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean. The Standard Missile-3 was one of two interceptors launched from Pearl Harbor-based guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) that collided with two ballistic missile targets launched from the Pacific Missile Range Test Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, within minutes of one another. U.S. Navy photo (RELEASED)

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B-24 aircraft at Barking Sands, Kauai, refueling or regrouping prior to Southwest Pacific deployment c1944-45

Barking Sands Air Base, Kauai, with B-24, C-47 and C-45 aircraft. 1942

Barking Sands Field, Kauai, TH 9-4-1941

Barking Sands Field, Kauai, T. H. 9-4-1941

Constructing Barking Sands Air Base, c1944-1945 with B-24 aircraft.

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081101-N-0000X-002 PACIFIC OCEAN (Nov. 1, 2008) A ballistic threat target missile is launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii, enroute to an intercept over an open ocean area northwest of Kauai as part of Pacific Blitz 08. The target was successfully intercepted by a Standard Missile – 3 (SM-3) launched from the Pearl Harbor-based guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60).(U.S. Navy photo/Released)