YVTO is the callsign of the official

time signal A time signal is a visible, audible, mechanical, or electronic signal used as a reference to determine the time of day. Church bells or voices announcing hours of prayer gave way to automatically operated chimes on public clocks; however, audi ...

from the Juan Manuel Cagigal Naval Observatory in

Caracas Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as 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 ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. The content of YVTO's signal, which is a continuous 1 kW

amplitude modulated Amplitude modulation (AM) is a modulation technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting messages with a radio wave. In amplitude modulation, the amplitude (signal strength) of the wave is varied in proportion to t ...

carrier wave at 5.000

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

, 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 Venezuela uses the UTC−04:00 time offset, and they had previously used UTC−04:30 from 9 December 2007 until 30 April 2016. The time is commonly called ''Venezuelan Standard Time'' (VET), and legally referred to as ''Hora Legal de Venezuela'' ...

(VET), and is only sent using

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

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