The "MSF" 60KHz time-signal transmitter in England has several scheduled
maintenance days each year when it is turned off for a few hours in the
middle of the day. Yesterday was one such day, and I was curious to see
when and how quickly they would turn it off and on again, so recorded the
event using my WinRadio card, and a not very special aerial - so it is a
rather noisy signal. Attached is a plot of both turn-on and turn-off -
note the different time-scales:
[image: Inline images 1]
It was turned off by reducing the power over about half a second, and then
curiously a few seconds later it bounced back at reduced power for a few
seconds. When it was turned on again half an hour later, they slowly
ramped up the power over about a minute!
(Plots from screen-grabs of Audacity from the recorded CW tone.)
Peter Vince (London, England)
The "MSF" 60KHz time-signal transmitter in England has several scheduled
maintenance days each year when it is turned off for a few hours in the
middle of the day. Yesterday was one such day, and I was curious to see
when and how quickly they would turn it off and on again, so recorded the
event using my WinRadio card, and a not very special aerial - so it is a
rather noisy signal. Attached is a plot of both turn-on and turn-off -
note the different time-scales:
[image: Inline images 1]
It was turned off by reducing the power over about half a second, and then
curiously a few seconds later it bounced back at reduced power for a few
seconds. When it was turned on again half an hour later, they slowly
ramped up the power over about a minute!
(Plots from screen-grabs of Audacity from the recorded CW tone.)
Peter Vince (London, England)
