Hi Iain
It is operating from mid 2012 at least, I started a thread about it on
06/29/2012 when I noticed it and several members responded with their
opinions.
It seems to be more a "pirate station" than an "experimental station", I
have serious doubts that they may have a license for it.
For starting their announced web page www.italcable.it redirects to
www.associazioneitalcable.it (Italcable was a historic
telecommunications company now merged into Telecom Italia).
The site has just a page without any explanation about the association
and his goals and only announces their "Open Source Sensors" and the
Time Signals stations on 10 MHz and 15 MHz both defined as "amateur and
experimental station". They also include an email address, a postal
address and under "License" they say "Authorized by the Ministry of
Economic Development". I suppose that is the license for operating the
association, not the radio stations.
The 10 MHz station frequency is almost 4 Hz down since the beginning,
the 15 MHz transmission, new for me, is much more on frequency, less
than 1 Hz high.
The pips are at 1110 Hz above the carrier, I did not made any effort for
reading the code, even it could be fake, neither how good is its time .
And their use of music for filling the idle time severely interferes
with legitimate time signals in these frequencies.
Also, according to some local hams, the stated transmission site is faked.
Best regards,
Ignacio EB4APL
On 28/04/2013 14:43, Iain Young wrote:
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
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