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

Thu Jan 6 20:49:03 UTC 2011

Arthur,
 you mention that the 204 can select 60 KHz by thumbwheel. Do you have  a 
schematic of that synthesizer? I know they had a 60 KHz down converter I have 
 modified my unit and in my TI days modified quite a few for our cal labs 
by  setting the oscillator to 122 KHz dividing it by two and driving the 
mixer.  Still have one working and think it is still the best. 
Bert

In a message dated 1/6/2011 11:05:25 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
golgarfrincham at yahoo.com writes:

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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