Yes never actually tried to listen to it, but you could be right that modern
crap on the mains might well be swamping the front end, they tend to use a
ferrite rod and obviously orientation might be critical for that.
What does it sound like is it a modulated signal or a frequency shift keyed
thing.
Brian

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The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

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"T i m" wrote in message
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Years ago I built a digital (LED) MSF clock kit that had a separate
receiver [1] and display modules and it worked ok for many years.

Then I then converted a std wall clock to MSF (MSF mech) and that's
been running fine until yesterday and now it doesn't seem to sync
(checked the battery etc). It does various things, like moves at 50%
speed after sitting there for some time but doesn't seem to react as
it normally does (I think it also double steps under some
circumstances).

It's one where (if I remember correctly) you set it to midnight and
put the battery in (or hit the button on the back) and it sorts itself
out from there. When the clocks go forward or back it either speeds up
or waits.

So, I don't know if it's the clock (mech) or the signal (someone has
added something locally that's affecting the signal) and so I wondered
if I could tune to the 60khz / AM with something?

My Yupiteru MVT-7100 scanner only goes down to 100khz. ;-(

Just for the S&G's I've ordered a more modern 60khz MSF tuner kit that
has an 'Output' LED that should give me some idea if / where I can get
a good MSF signal and I can also use as a front end to an Arduino MSF
clock.

Cheers, T i m

[1] The old MSF kit had an output on a 3.5mm stereo jack and you could
put an earpiece in there and 'listen' to the signal to aid the tuning.

p.s. As I type this, the analogue clock has *just* gone into fast mode
(after 12+ hours) suggesting it's picked up a signal again??

Brian Gaff (Sofa) explained on 18/08/2020 :
What does it sound like is it a modulated signal or a frequency shift keyed
thing.

It is carrier on/off keyed once per second, with a fast on/off at the
epoch. Length of on versus transmits time and date data, at one bit per
second. The 'fast' on/off is called the croak and transmits the fast
data burst - all data sent within the epoch second.