[time-nuts] Italian Time Station on 10 MHz ?

Iain Young iain at g7iii.net
Sun Apr 28 08:43:27 EDT 2013


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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