[time-nuts] Looking for Tracor 599 VLF Receiver Manual

Arthur Dent golgarfrincham at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 6 16:04:18 UTC 2011


There were quite a few variations of the Tracor 599 receivers. Actually the
599K had the synthesizer built into the 599-204 receiver module and had
a thumbwheel switch that you could use to to select 60.0Khz for WWVB
reception plus a srtipchart recorder to plot the phase difference.

The 599-201 receiver schematic I've linked to may be like the 599-203 
module you have except for the number of filters it can accept. There is a
broadband amplifier feeding the filter you select that sends that signal to 
the mixer where the L.O. of the received signal frequency +/- 1Khz is 
combined to give the 1Khz I.F. frequency that is fed through a filter and 
an amp to the other modules. If your synthesizer only goes to 30.9KHZ 
you would have to modify that output to either 59.0Khz or 61.0Khz in order 
to get the required 1Khz I.F. frequency. You would also need an appropriate 
60Khz xtal filter to place after the broadband amplifier. With all the old 
germanium transistors used I'd question how reliable the receiver would be. 

For a receiver that was made about 1960 I really don't think it is worth the 
effort. Having said that, I do have an even older RMS Engineering VLF 
comparator modified to receive WWVB that has been running for about 
20 years.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5163/5330411094_743371545b_b.jpg

       -Arthur



      


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