Hi Folks,
A friend of mine sent me a You Tube recording of an unidentified Time Station on 10MHz, possibly from Italy or Brazil. Further work seems to suggest it is indeed an experimental time station from Italy. Below is a (modified for context) version of the email I sent him: --BEGIN INCLUDE MESSAGE--- At first look, I tend to agree with others that it's a new experimental Italian Time Signal. It is also shown on this You Tube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSQyKh694RU Video claims to be: Experimental Time Signal from the italian private socitey Italcable transmitting at 10000KHz Three observations from this recording: a) The "pips" are about ~1k up from the main carrier on 10MHz. Probably a little higher, maybe 1.1k b) Right at the beginning, there is a burst of digital comms, that to my ear sounded similar to 300 baud packet. Checking the Frequency vs Amplitude display in the bottom left again, it appears that that burst is up at ~2k+ from the 10MHz centre Now...a PK232 running 300 baud uses the following frequencies: 2110 Mark, and 2310 space tones as a PK-232, with the center of the tones being 2210 Hz, and going fullscreen on the video suggests that the spikes during that burst are smack where we would see them for 300 baud packet when using a PK-232. (With the resolution of the youtube video and the screen, thats as accurate as I can get) c) The burst does appear to repeat later in the recording, which suggests it may be part of the time code, rather than some Italian APRS station being a tad off frequency I would suggest that the next step would be to put a 300 baud PK232 MODEM on 10 MHz, and record anything that gets decoded. If its ASCII (highly unlikely to be KISS Frames unless it is someone way off frequency, and c) above would seem to suggest that's less likely, then it may well be the time of day. In that case, in order to use it, we need to work out the reference point. There seems to be six pips 1 second apart, a gap of a two seconds, followed by a final seventh pip. While different to Radio 4's longer final pip, this is similar to DCF where the final second of the minute is not modulated (MSF does something similar with a 500mS "carrier off" at the beginning of the minute. My guess is the seventh pip identifies the start of the minute, with the 6 pips beforehand being used for receivers to lock on, and identify the 2 second gap, with the 300 baud packet being used to carry the time information itself for the next minute. Now, do you have the ability to listen on 10MHz with a PK232 tones sound MODEM ? :) ---END INCLUDE MESSAGE--- I am hoping to get a recording or two of it (I don't have HF RF capability right now, but do have replay and 300 baud decode capability), to see if it really is 300 baud packet, but have any (Probably European) time-nuts hear this signal ? Anyone have any details on the time code ? I'm going to hope it might be possible to decode the time from the packet burst, but if anyone has any prior knowledge, then a head start is never a bad thing when trying to decode these things :) (BTW, the station seems to play music most of the minute, which quietens during the packet burst and pips) All the Best Iain _______________________________________________ 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.
