[time-nuts] Spectracom 8170 Time of Day grief...

[paul swed]

Burt
There is nothing wrong with your 8170. WWVB no longer allows it to work
correctly because of the phase modulation. They went to all psk about 1
month ago. They had been reverting back twice a day for things like the
8170.
So the ole 8170 is dead.
You need to build something like the d-psk-r to get it going though I have
not had time to actually add the am phase flipper precisely for the likes
of a 8170. I have one also.
Sorry
Paul
WB8TSL








On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 5:35 PM, Burt I. Weiner <biwa at att.net> wrote:

> My good old Spectracom 8170 is not setting time.  I don't use it for
> frequency, just as a clock for my Hazetorium.  I live about 20 minutes
> north of downtown Los Angles in Glendale.  The antenna I'm using is the
> Ferrite Rod loop in PVC that came with the 8170.  It's located on my back
> porch just laying on the floor with its maximum pickup direction towards
> Boulder, Colorado.  It has worked reliably for many years in that location.
>
> The symptoms are...  One day about a month ago I noticed that it seemed to
> be in the start mode, that is, the far left digit was flashing between 0,
> 1, 2, and a lot of 4's, and the left most digits were counting time since
> an apparent restart.  Zeros and ones are the logical data states, two is a
> place holder and four indicates data errors.  I'm not aware of it having
> lost primary power, but it's not on a UPS.  In a week's time it did not
> give me time sync, but shows a green locked light most of the time.  This
> happened several years ago and a fellow at Spectracom told me to change all
> the electrolytics on the one board that has only 4 electrolytics on it.  I
> did and it started to work just peachy-keen.   The caps I put in then were
> of good quality, but I decided to change them again.  This did not solve
> the problem.
>
> The power supply voltages are all well within limits and they look clean.
>  I seem to have plenty of, but not too much, signal.  By that I mean it
> doesn't appear to be oscillating.  The antenna is about 30' away from the
> receiver on a piece of coax that appears to look ok.  What I do notice is
> that the signal looks like it's going through quite a bit of turbulence.  I
> do not see anything that looks like interference.  I've looked at the
> output of the filter amp inside the 8170 and what I see is the signal
> dithering in amplitude quite rapidly and sometimes squaring off for a
> moment - sort of what you would expect to see during the Diurnal Shift
> periods of the day.  I can see the 10 dB drops, but they're not very clean
> due to the rapid dithering.  I've checked the antenna connections and tried
> different azimuth headings.  The location and azimuth it has been for years
> still seems to be the best.  Looking at the output of what I'm guessing is
> a Schmitt Trigger, I see the ST's output jumping from 0 to +5, but
> erratically, which considering the received signal, makes sense.
>
> I'm wondering if I'm just in a period of time that's receiving a poor
> quality signal?  It doesn't seem like WWVB's new phase-modulated format
> should be causing this kind of a problem.
>
> All observations, opinions and suggestions are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Burt, K6OQK
>
>
>
> Burt I. Weiner Associates
> Broadcast Technical Services
> Glendale, California  U.S.A.
> biwa at att.net
> www.biwa.cc
> K6OQK
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