In recent days, scientific researchers from the NTSC have finished their debugging of the time signal equipment developed for the SCRS, officially starting to supply the source-tracing service of standard time for the SCRS.

SCRS, Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration under the Ministry of Communications is not only a special coast radio station supplying vessels from all countries with ship-to-shore communications and safety information, but also the only one recognized by the Ministry of Communications of our country that assume the watch-keeping task for the medium- and high-frequency international distress of international DSC in the 7th Northwest Pacific SRR (Search and Rescue Region) at Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS). As the largest coast radio station in China, it is engaged in the business of providing time signal for the Chinese and foreign vessels in China sea areas, playing an important role in vessel navigation and sailing safety. Due to historical reasons, it was the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO) that supplied standard time signal source to the SCRS for decades of years. However, the SAO fails to resume its work due to the adjustment of working direction and the aging equipment. In an effort to meet the business need of coast radio station in the new period and through consultations among the three sides, the NTSC is assigned to serve the SCRS with the standard time signal source.

For this reason, the NTSC has specially developed Shaanxi-Shanghai time transmission equipment, time-code generator and so on. After several commissioning back and forth, these equipments passed the commissioning at the end of Apr. Through the trial broadcasting and monitoring, the new time signal format of SCRS complies completely with the requirements of maritime radio regulations. At present, the SCRS and the NTSC conduct time comparisons four times every day, and the SCRS broadcasts the new international time signal to Chinese and foreign vessels twice a day with call sign being XSG and time being 10:55:00—11:00:30 and 16:55:00—16:00:30. By now, the NTSC provides formally the SCRS with the source-tracing service of standard time.