Odd Time tick station, June 17, 2014, to June 18, 2014, multiple frequencies. And no, these are not RFI or anything like this, the signals have propagation and are heard across wide areas.
In early May, 2014, nickcarr in the #wunclub chat reported hearing an odd time tick station on 13159 kHz. The station never gave an ID and never had a minute indicator in the audio, just even, rhythmic, 1 second pips. Unfortunately I was working a heavy schedule at that time and really never had a chance to pursue the station much. I did get to record it on May 4, 2014, from about 0001 to 0101 UTC, at which time it went off air.
The center frequency of the station was 13159.58 kHz, and the time ticks were AM. There were spurs that appeared unmodulated + and – 3 kHz from the carrier. I am not saying they were unmodulated for sure, but if they were modulated I could not hear anything on them. The time ticks were about 5 ms in length, or about the same length as WWV and WWVH time ticks. The ticks seemed to start a few ms after WWV ticks did, but I did not get a good measurement on that.
And then the 13159.58 kHz signal stopped sending and I have not seen it since.
Fast forward to last night. The Pips ditter network was up and I was searching frequencies, when I ran across an every second time tick occurring on 17179.18 kHz. Looking closer at this signal I realized there were spurs each side of it at 3 kHz, and I mean 3 kHz down to the Hz. The time ticks were again about 5 msec. I checked 13159.58 but no sign of it there. So, the signal was back but on a new frequency.
While recording it I noticed several other frequencies that appeared to have the same signal. All totaled I ended up finding 45 frequencies associated with this signal. 20 of them had time ticks on them and 25 did not show detectable time pulses. Of the 25 that did not show time ticks several may have had audio, but were too weak to be sure. It is conceivable that every frequency had the time ticks, but some were just too weak for me to make out. All of them were mathematically related to other frequencies found by 3, 87, or 90 kHz down to less than 1 Hz deviation. 17179.18 kHz seemed to be the key frequency, with the others distributed around that in various patterns.
I watched and recorded the signal on multiple frequencies from 2337 UTC on June 17, to 0101 UTC on June 18, 2014, when the signal abruptly left the air on all freqs. Not that this is the same shutdown time I saw on May 4. At various times in that time period it faded up and down, from very strong to weak, and I got the impression the power level was not constant, as if the level variation might not have been propagation related. I was able to compare the arrival time of the pulses on this signal with the arrival time of pulses form WWV on 5000 kHz. They arrived within 1 msec of the WWV pulses. This has little meaning in and of itself, but if the pulses are sent in sync with WWV then the path distance from the transmitter to me is within 200 km of the distance from me to WWV.
In the following list of frequencies the ! means it appeared to be a primary signal. This was a strong signal with spurs around it. The * indicates there was no detectable audio. If there is no symbol after the frequency that means time ticks were detectable, but it was many dB down form the closest “primary” signal, possibly some kind of spur.
The numbers to the right of each frequency are the offset from 17179.18 kHz.
Time tick
Freqs (kHz)
16909.18 * -270
16912.18 ! -267
16915.18 ! -264
16918.18 * -261
16999.18 -180
17002.18 ! -177
17005.18 -174
17089.18 ! -90
17092.18 ! -87
17170.18 * -9
17173.18 * -6
17176.18 -3
17179.18 ! 0
17182.18 3
17185.18 * 6
17188.18 * 9
17191.18 * 12
17260.18 * 81
17263.18 84
17266.18 ! 87
17269.18 ! 90
17272.18 93
17275.18 * 96
17347.18 * 168
17350.18 * 171
17353.18 * 174
17356.18 ! 177
17362.18 * 183
17365.18 * 186
17434.18 * 255
17437.18 * 258
17440.18 * 261
17443.18 ! 264
17446.18 ! 267
17449.18 * 270
17527.18 * 348
17530.18 * 351
17533.18 ! 354
17536.18 * 357
17614.18 * 435
17620.18 ! 441
17623.18 * 444
17626.18 * 447
17707.18 * 528
17710.18 ! 531
Today the signal seemed to come up about 1440 UTC, I am unsure if this was propagation bringing it up or if that is when it came on. There has appeared to be abrupt changes in signal level, looking much sharper than propagation fade up or down, this appears to be a step function. At times the signal has been strong, and other times it has been undetectable. While I think it has been on continuously since then (it is now 2245 UTC) I cannot be 100% sure of it.
Anyone else catching this thing?
T!
Topic: Odd time ticks, multiple frequencies, June 17, 2014, 2337 to 0101 UTC (Read 1879 times)
