Hi all Time Nuts, I am a 'side line' member of the mailing list, ex Broadcast engineer whose principle fascination is accurate pendulum clocks and as one who has been lucky enough to have been in the presence of the ultimate "Clock" here in South Africa, the SAST (South African Standard Time) cluster.
We do not have a "free to air" telephonic Time and Freq service in SA as the NIST does and our principle RF source (ZUO_ has long been discontinued for economic reasons (Other than the distant low power coastal stations the transmit a few mins a day for shipping purposes). The former Govt Labs and Standards Authorities are now privatised to lessen the burden on the fiscus and supposed to be self supporting, so charge and arm and a leg for access to their facilities, that our tax money paid for in the first place) At present, radio propagation conditions are so poor that and of the NIST and other stations are unusable as a tone reference or 1 pulse per second reference, and so have to call the NIST land line number, which is an expensive call from South Africa. As a voluntary / community service, we are trying to establish a freely accessible tone and pulse service and are looking for a donation of any unwanted equipment that will help us get a more stable 440hz and 1 PPS reference running. (The current oscillator is a good old uncompensated crystal British Ferrograph Test Set from broadcast days interrupted by another uncompensated xtal osc which interrupts the tone to prove the PPS output). Any donation of unwanted equipment, especially of more stable equipment or the ultimate, a GPS Rx board with 1 PPS output would be greatly appreciated. If anyone is prepared to help, I would be most grateful and would cover the shipping costs to SA. The mains in SA is 220v 50hz, but do have access to a 120v 60hz sinewave inverter unit to safely power US spec equipment. Many thanks in advance, Kind regards, Chris D Bagwanath "Its About Time" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel +27 83 700 5057 Fax: +27 11 792 166 _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
