ROA Time is the official time of

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. It is established by ROA, the Royal Institute and Observatory of the ''Armada'' (Armada being the name of the

Spanish Navy The Spanish Navy, officially the Armada, is the Navy, maritime branch of the Spanish Armed Forces and one of the oldest active naval forces in the world. The Spanish Navy was responsible for a number of major historic achievements in navigation ...

in Spanish), at San Fernando,

Cádiz Cádiz ( , , ) is a city in Spain and the capital of the Province of Cádiz in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. It is located in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula off the Atlantic Ocean separated fr ...

Broadcasting methods

ROA broadcasts the official time in Spain using the following methods: # Transmission of

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, au ...

s in HF in two daily intervals of 25 minutes. From 10:00 UTC to 10:25 UTC on 15.006 MHz and from 10:30 UTC to 10:55 UTC on 4.998 MHz. The station is a Harris RF-130 with 1kW of power broadcasting from San Fernando (Cádiz). This is the only radio broadcast of official time in Spain as there is no

longwave In radio, longwave (also spelled long wave or long-wave and commonly abbreviated LW) is the part of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave (MW) broadcasting band. The term is historic, dati ...

station broadcasting time signals such as

DCF77 DCF77 is a German longwave time signal and standard-frequency radio station. It started service as a standard-frequency station on 1 January 1959. In June 1973, date and time information was added. Its primary and backup transmitter are ...

from

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

or MSF60 (also known as NPL) from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. # Via hotline (Phone number: +34 956 59 94 29), using a time information broadcasting protocol widely used in Europe (European Telephone Code Standard). Access is limited to two minutes per call and admits international calls. # NTP Protocol (

Network Time Protocol The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-Network latency, latency data networks. In operation since before 1985, NTP is one of the oldest Intern ...

), through two Internet servers placed in San Fernando and a third one placed in Madrid (NTP Servers: hora.roa.es and minuto.roa.es, both available through ntp.roa.es). # Timestamping. The ROA, as a TSA (Time Stamping Authority), provides a timestamping server for official certifications through a standard digital certificate x509 v3. This system is used by the whole public administration in Spain for timestamping their transactions. This service is available through the SARA Network (Sistema de Aplicaciones y Redes para las Administraciones).

References

External links

Real Observatorio de la Armada - Time
Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada (Royal Institute and Observatory of the Spanish Navy)
ROA official time
Time in Spain Spanish Navy {{Time signal authorities