I recently had an issue with my FZ-M1 and the clock drifting pretty quickly. No doubt the problem is likely something like a low CMOS battery and I’ll get around to fixing that if it becomes a real problem in the future – that said, a quick way to get passed the problem for now, is to simply sync the clock via the built in GPS whenever I need accurate time (such as when I’m activating with FT8 or JS8Call).
My FZ-G1 and FZ-M1 both have a Sierra Wireless WWAN card built in, and this card has GPS capability. The problem is, by default it does not expose an NMEA COM port which tools such as BktTimeSync require. However, this is a relatively simple thing to fix, so here’s the steps that I followed to get this working on Windows 10 and Windows 11. The specific card in my device is a Sierra Wireless EM7305 but I’m sure the steps will be similar for other devices in the series.
Firstly, I removed the default Sierra Wireless driver by going to “Add or remove programs”, selecting the Sierra Wireless driver package and then clicking “Uninstall”.
I downloaded the the Windows Drivers directly from Sierra Wireless. I grabbed Build 4581. To download the file you need a Sierra Wireless account, however you can register one for free.
To install the driver, open a command line as an administrator (Open the Start Menu, type “cmd”, then select “Run as administrator”). You’ll need to be in the same directory as the downloaded driver, so for me I had to run “cd Downloads” to get to my Downloads folder. Then install the driver with the following:
GenericDriverSetup.exe USBCOMP=8This will then install the driver but with the NMEA COM port exposed. However, this didn’t appear for me until after a reboot. Once you’ve rebooted check Device Manager and you should see something like this:
The specific number assigned to each COM port will be different; but for me the NMEA port is now exposed on COM5. I can then access this with tools such as VisualGPSView to check the status of my GPS lock, and I can access it with BktTimeSync to sync the clock based on GPS time. If you’re doing this at home, remember that GPS requires line of site to the sky, so if you’re struggling to get a lock try it outside. You should the “Satellites in View” number in VisualGPSView tick up almost immediately but getting a position lock can take up to 60 seconds. Once you’ve got a lock, close VisualGPSView and open BktTimeSync and you should be able to sync the time now.