Thanks to all for the suggestions. I dug a ferrite rod AM radio antenna out of the box this morning. I have a box of 10 left over from the late 80s. It measures 0.950 mH so I will add some turns to get it to 1.5 mH which will be easier to resonate at 60 kHz. Then I need to build up the RF amp and run the output through a 60 kHz crystal filter. I have to order the crystals since I don't have any on hand. It will take a couple of weeks to get the front end working.
I am in Phoenix so the WWVB signal is of decent quality here even during the daytime. My 25 year old cheap Casio watch will sync up within 2-3 minutes any time of day or night. It normally syncs at 2 am but I have done tests to confirm daytime sync works reliably. Mark, I know virtually nothing about SDR other than it works. I bought a RTL-SDR.Com module a couple of years ago and played with it a little bit. But it quit working and I haven't thought about SDR since then. My Icom 7300 is a SDR and it works very well. I think to attempt to design a SDR would be well over my head. I anticipate this project taking 2-3 months. If I get it working I will be glad to share everything with the group. Lester and Paul, I will test with the Costas loop as it may be the easiest way to go. To test the Costas loop I am basically going to duplicate the KD2BD design. I was reluctant about it in the beginning but more reading seems to indicate it will be fine. My AWG allows me to set the phase from 0 to 360 degrees independently on each channel so I can use that for initial testing. That testing can be done prior to getting the front end working. Richard, is your software posted somewhere? I assume it allows you to specify the time and date you want it to send. That would come in handy for writing the code to extract the timer/date data. I have seen examples of the Arduino transmitting the old AM signal but don't recall seeing one that sends the BPSK stream. I have a GPS time receiver with a 1.2 inch LED display that I built a couple of years ago. I have it setup so the UART outputs the gprmc NEMA string in case I want to look at it. I have a couple of spare GPS modules lying around and several Arduino Uno modules. I have no problem picking up the GPS satellites using only the patch antenna that is built into the modules. Ray, AB7HE _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
