Once upon a time in the '70'S in WirelessWorld...........

[unknownparticle]

This is a Q for those of a certain generation, in the UK, who read Wireless World mag, which was the best electronics mag ever!
Sometime in the 70's there was a construction project for an MSF radio controlled, digital clock.  I'm trying to determine which year and months of Wireless World those articles were in? 
I recall reading it in awe of the ambition and complexity of the project, they even made the PCB's available to constructors via an associated company. However, it was for the time a very expensive project, using all discreet 74 series logic, and I was young at without the means to afford it.
In a blatant nostalgia way I would now like to find the series and build the clock, so if anyone can help I would be so grateful.

[nfmax]

N.C. Helsby, "Self-setting time code clock", Wireless World Vol 82, 1976, August, September, October & November issues

[Bud]

Interesting to hear that i am not the only one having nostalgia projects on the bench now which i could not afford back then when i was a teen  and then a uni student 

[StillTrying]

Why buy a £3 module when you could build a monstrosity instead.

www.keith-snook.info/wireless-world-magazine/Wireless-World-1976/Self-setting%20time%20code%20clock.pdf

[tggzzz]

Why buy a £3 module when you could build a monstrosity instead.

www.keith-snook.info/wireless-world-magazine/Wireless-World-1976/Self-setting%20time%20code%20clock.pdf

.. plus the errata on p76 of https://www.americanradiohistory.com/UK/Wireless-World/70s/Wireless-World-1976-11.pdf which also contains Doug Self's preamp.

For more opportunities to wallow in nostalgia: https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Wireless_World_Magazine.htm

[SerieZ]

Why buy a £3 module when you could build a monstrosity instead.

www.keith-snook.info/wireless-world-magazine/Wireless-World-1976/Self-setting%20time%20code%20clock.pdf

An expensive monstrosity as well...   try to explain to the Wife why you absolutely need out of production vintage components! 

[mansaxel]

Interesting to hear that i am not the only one having nostalgia projects on the bench now which i could not afford back then when i was a teen  and then a uni student 

My entire T.E.A is a "couldn't afford then, wants it now" nostalgia rampage.  It started with "oscilloscope", and continued with "Fluke DMM" and "Valve Volt meter", and now I'm way down the rabbit hole.

[unknownparticle]

Why buy a £3 module when you could build a monstrosity instead.

Because, no fun and no challenge!  Huge thanks for the PDF, that has seriously made my day! 

[unknownparticle]

An expensive monstrosity as well...   try to explain to the Wife why you absolutely need out of production vintage components! 

There's not a lot in there that's difficult or expensive to source if LS logic would work, the MC1496 is still available new, 741 op-amps aren't exotic, the only bits I can see that might be hard to find would be the original displays and the voltage regulator, both of which would be easy to replace with more modern bits.

If you want period original though...

I actually have an original, from the period, voltage reg!! And going through the components list, I have many of the 74 series chips.  Now, I wonder if Mr Sagan has any PCB's left!    At £13.00 that would have been a weeks wages for a working man back then, I was still a schoolboy though!  Wonder how many readers actually built one of these?!

[chris_leyson]

I remember walking around with a friend after school one day and we were looking for any old valve radios that people might have thrown out. Didn't see any radios but found five or six boxes of old editions of Wireless World from the 1960's. My friend wasn't interested so after a few trips back and forth I had enough reading matter for months. Probably still have some of the articles filed away.
Wireless World was probably the best ever electronics magazine back in it's heyday.

[unknownparticle]

I agree with that, WW was truly excellent, I've never seen anything better.  A few years back I was fortunate enough to be given, much to the relief of the guys wife, a virtually complete collection of WW from the early 60's onwards.  Back in the day I only read it from around the early 70's to about 1980, so it's a real treat to be going through it now!  I started reading these copies from the 80's back and haven't reached the editions with the above clock yet. Now I'll be able to go straight to them and immerse in nostalgic bliss!

Do you dabble in valve radios now?  Part of my electronics tinkering is with valve radios and TV's, which is strange, because back when I began my interest in electronics I regarded anything valve as obsolete junk!  Now I find the valve world fascinating, after all, valves were the first truly electronic device. 

[mcovington]

Don't overlook the fact that decades of Wireless World are on line at https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Wireless_World_Magazine.htm .

[StillTrying]

Don't overlook the fact that decades of Wireless World are on line at

It's difficult to overlook when it's in a post a few above.

When I was quite young someone retiring gave me a few bags of 74 TTL, I've spent years giving it away but there's still some left with dates around '77.

[rsjsouza]

An expensive monstrosity as well...   try to explain to the Wife why you absolutely need out of production vintage components! 

There's not a lot in there that's difficult or expensive to source if LS logic would work, the MC1496 is still available new, 741 op-amps aren't exotic, the only bits I can see that might be hard to find would be the original displays and the voltage regulator, both of which would be easy to replace with more modern bits.

If you want period original though...

I actually have an original, from the period, voltage reg!!

And this is still active. Although at pretty hefty prices.
http://www.ti.com/product/LM309

[coppice]

I agree with that, WW was truly excellent, I've never seen anything better.

Wireless World was an excellent magazine in its early days. It was the only UK magazine that tried to appeal to both amateur and professional people. As the years went by, however, they started dumbing it down, removing its appeal for all the groups who used to enjoy it, without really generating new markets.

[Gyro]

I was looking through the archive a while back looking for an electrostatic headphone design article that I remembered, it seemed a nicely quirky design at the time - drilled perspex sheets, aquadag coatings, clingfilm diaphrams etc complete with HV push-pull drivers and bias supplies. Looking back further I found that there had been no less than three such designs over the years!

They had some great innovative designs and articles over the years, including things like Fleming reminiscing about his triode valve.

[MarkMLl]

Why buy a £3 module when you could build a monstrosity instead.

I suspect that with a design like that it would be easier to extract the phase of the 60kHz signal and to characterise the delay before the start-of-second edge.

Commercially produced modules ostensibly using the MAS6180C chip are very likely (I find) to be actually using the MAS6180C1, which doesn't expose the carrier (QOM pin n/c). I've not tried probing a radio-corrected quartz movement yet.

MarkMLl

[Ian.M]

There's also the issue that the MSF fast (100 baud) timecode was discontinued in 1998 [ref.], so even if you did build it, it would do sweet F.A. unless you also built a modulated 60KHz timecode generator to sit beside it!

However, the receiver circuit on page 2 of the PDF StillTrying linked should still be viable, just take its output from IC4 and  decode the slow (1 baud)  code with an Arduino or similar.  Googling MSF decoder sketch finds plenty of people that have done the software side of it, or if you want to roll your own, the signal specs can be found [here].

If you are a period purist, a minimal Z80 system could be used in place of the Arduino.

[StillTrying]

Why buy a £3 module when you could build a monstrosity instead.

I suspect that with a design like that it would be easier to extract the phase of the 60kHz signal and to characterise the delay before the start-of-second edge.

I would think finding the exact point of the seconds edge would still be difficult because the received 60kHz ends up looking like the last red trace.
http://xtrsystems.com/vlf/wwvb_test.html


www.burningimage.net/clock/sensitive-60khz-receiver/

[MarkMLl]

I would think finding the exact point of the seconds edge would still be difficult because the received 60kHz ends up looking like the last red trace.
http://xtrsystems.com/vlf/wwvb_test.html
www.burningimage.net/clock/sensitive-60khz-receiver/

My recollection from the time when various radiocode clock designs were published is that the phase of the MSF signal was significant. The NPL themselves say that the UTC second marker "is transmitted with an accuracy better than +-1 ms.", but I'd expect the edge precision to be fairly constant for each second.

The 60 kHz signal is intended to be a frequency standard, although I'm not sure how the NPL would describe it: probably tertiary. By counting the carrier- at least while idling- it should be possible to derive a high-precision 1 Hz signal. And in principle it should be possible to characterise the Tx modulation performance to derive high-accuracy UTC seconds.

MarkMLl

[Kilo Tango]

I remember, when I were but a lad, building a digital clock using 7400 series logic and a 6.3V heater transformer. It would have cost a fortune to buy all the chips and display, however I spend a summer working at "a certain computer company", and got a load of faulty logic boards and then found out what the specially marked codes meant. Trouble was any electrical spike and the time would jump, a good excuse for sleeping in !.

Ken

[MarkMLl]

I remember, when I were but a lad...

You were lucky... the computer company I worked for didn't use standard TTL or CMOS, they rebadged what I believe was Fairchild CTL as something they had invented themselves and of course promoted it as superior to every alternative.

MarkMLl

[vk6zgo]

I remember, when I were but a lad...

You were lucky... the computer company I worked for didn't use standard TTL or CMOS, they rebadged what I believe was Fairchild CTL as something they had invented themselves and of course promoted it as superior to every alternative.

MarkMLl

Somebody at Telecom Australia's Lab back in the day had an "in" with Fairchild, & many of their projects had weird devices without any generic equivalents, so regular Fairchild ICs & transistors were hassle enough without someone rebadging them.

The TA lab also used one type of Siemens optocoupler, which was seemingly,the same as all the other ones in a six pin package, except that it had a different pinout.
Does anyone recall that type, & why it was different?

[vk6zgo]

I agree with that, WW was truly excellent, I've never seen anything better.

Wireless World was an excellent magazine in its early days. It was the only UK magazine that tried to appeal to both amateur and professional people. As the years went by, however, they started dumbing it down, removing its appeal for all the groups who used to enjoy it, without really generating new markets.

I particularly enjoyed the "Letters" section.
The well known Ivor Catt had written a very erudite article, & there were comments from "Weever-Mowse", & "Ouida Dogg", among others.

I always liked how people could have fun, whist still making a valuable contribution to the discussion.

[coppice]

I agree with that, WW was truly excellent, I've never seen anything better.

Wireless World was an excellent magazine in its early days. It was the only UK magazine that tried to appeal to both amateur and professional people. As the years went by, however, they started dumbing it down, removing its appeal for all the groups who used to enjoy it, without really generating new markets.

I particularly enjoyed the "Letters" section.
The well known Ivor Catt had written a very erudite article, & there were comments from "Weever-Mowse", & "Ouida Dogg", among others.

I always liked how people could have fun, whist still making a valuable contribution to the discussion.

I use to know Ivor Catt. He is a very interesting character. "The Catt Concept" is a classic book for those frustrated with industrial insanity.

[DoctorStrangelove]

I've built a couple of the Wireless World receivers using the 1496 mixer.

The first one sort of worked and needed much modification.

Then MSF moved from Rugby to Anthorn and lo! the signal level changed & it didn't work.

After much hacking about another version with added 60kHz amplification did deign to function, during which I was eventually reminded that bandpass tranformers need a coupling coefficient between the coils of a good deal less than one.

I bought all the ics for the original fast decoder and they've remained unused for the last 40 years.

I used a pic16f84 to decode the slow transmission, one of which uses a 16x2 LCD to display the time, the other displaying it as binary digits (well I was bored in work).

The output of the 1496 never seemed to correspond very well with the waveforms in the article & the comparator eventually became a floating comparator which did work reasonably enough.

Another receiver was the Rewbichron module from Ambit, of which I have two examples, neither of which ever seemed to do anything sensible at all.

Further potching led to a receiver using a PLL tone decoder that seems to work adequately.

I miss Wireless World, it was downhill all the way after 2005, the issues for 2006 & 2007 met the recycling last year when I determined there was nothing of any interest whatsoever in them.

[MarkMLl]

I bought all the ics for the original fast decoder and they've remained unused for the last 40 years.

I've got the bits put by to make one of these http://www.creative-science.org.uk/MSF_crystal_filter.html and am glad to say that they're still younger than 40 years :-)

Comparing the various satellite constellations' idea of UTC can be interesting, and I'm still looking forward to adding MSF to the mix.

MarkMLl

[Chris56000]

Hi!

I've got a boxful of bits to build the "John Linsley Hood HiFi Cassette Deck!!"

I couldn't afford it then, wants it now" nostalgia rampage.  It started with "oscilloscope", and continued with "Fluke DMM" and "Valve Volt meter", and now I'm way down the rabbit hole.

. . .I've fallen so far down that rabbit–hole I doubt I'll ever climb out of it – I've just realised I need to look for a Traco 527E Frequency Difference Meter for Part 6, Chapter 40 "Introduction to Frequency Measurements and Methods of Frequency Comparison" of the Gigantic T & M Theory and Repair Book I'm busily engaged in writing – 104 chapters nearly complete, 173 chapters still to start and 16 I can't yet start because of the stupid insane prices of the items concerned!

Chris Williams