Hi Chris.
As Tom said before these units are cheap and abundant because they can
not be used as time reference even if you do find an antenna.
To make things worse the antenna itself is active (i.e. amplified) with
a down converter that will bring down the 468 MHz signal frequency to
around 40 MHz (around that !) and that is the frequency that the
receiver expects. You can find in the easily found service manual. So it
will not be an easy task to replicate it even if you would want to try,
and to make thing worse the original ones are really rare and expensive.
TrueTime made a converter called the G2G that would use the GPS signal
and translate it to the signal the 468DC expects to get from the
original antenna. They are so rare I've been trying to purchase one for
years and never saw one listed.
But all is not lost, with an Arduino, a PIC or a RaspberriPi, a small
GPS receiver and a bit of work it can be modified as GPS based clock.
Or you can use NTP to synchronise your RaspberriPi.
Lots of fun for long winter nights !
Claude
Le 31/01/2022 22:02, [email protected] a écrit :
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I used to own/use a 468-DC. They are, unfortunately, useless now
because NOAA stopped transmitting the UHF-based time code over the GOES
satellites in the early 2000's (this is, very likely, why it was so
cheap).
In short ... Even if you got a perfect antenna for the unit,
there's nothing for it to receive. I believe you'd be wasting your time
and money (unless you want to get -really- adventurous and try adapting
its innards to sync off GPS).
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news...
On 31-Jan-22 18:32, NoName via time-nuts wrote:
I'm new to the group. I'm looking for an antenna for a Kinemetrics
468-DC. I only paid a few bucks for the unit and all the surplus
companies want 800-900USD for an antenna.
Does anyone have a source for a reasonably priced antenna, or, has
anyone built one that they would care to share the details on.
I appreciate anything I can learn,
Chris
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