We have a couple of these and one went crazy. Just refuse to sync to time unless it was horizontal and just kept spinning. This one used to take some time to sync from new.

The part that does all of the work is a small square block on the back of the clock. Easy to remove and replace. Turns out that the hand fittings go by the name of push fit and there are plenty about.

I did look at dismantling the old one but couldn't get completely down to the circuit board.

As it didn't sync well with the signal from Germany I bought one that uses the UK signal. It sync'd pretty quickly. Only problem is that it's a bit deeper than the type that was in and the stub for the hour hand is a little on the short size and needed pressing on dead square to hold. I might have to thin the retaining nut down a touch but all's ok so far.

Why bother? There are some pretty disgusting designs about. The new units came at 2 for about £9. The only neat clocks I could find showed European time.

Not sure what I will do with the 2nd one.

John

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The one's I bought came off Ebay Alan. Sold in pairs. Seems fine for around here. The one that came in it wasn't so good. It ticks the usual seconds and the min and hour hands move every 15 secs. I think that the Lidl ones were geared. It may have 2 drives as the second hand stopped when it went to 4 o'clock or what ever it was and it sync'd in well under 15 mins. The Lidl one have all taken a lot longer.

If buying for the German time signal type I would use Cousin's too but decided to give these a go. There is a company that sells hi torque ones but maybe Cousin's do too.

I didn't now that Lidl had sold them again. We've had ours for a long time. 2 30cm diameter and a small oblong digital one that's in the lounge. It fits in as it has a sort of marble effect at each end. Haven't had to replace the battery yet. The other Lidl larger one has been ok.

The ebay movements have 2 terminals to short out to put it in position hands mode but once the pin has been removed it's not a good idea to rotate the drives.

What got me looking at new clocks was the number that had some stupid made up makers name very prominent on the face. Yuck. Some also said shows EU time.

John

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Don't you mean the aisles that keep having things in them that you didn't know you wanted ?

The last one for me was a mini compressor for the car tyres. Much longer lead than the one I have. The one before that was an electric chain saw on the end of a long pole. All of our frying pans are from Lidl. Way better than what most shops stock but the best one is too heavy for my wife. I usually use it for curries and stuff like that.

The 2 pins are for resetting it to the 12 o'clock initial hands position mode. The wiki reckons that the signal is greater than 100uV / m all over the UK. Not exactly weak and is used in some areas of France. The German transmitter is way more powerful but some of it's coverage depends on ionospheric hop which can be a bit mixed. It's incredibly powerful in Germany but I can't find figures for any where else. This what they say about it

2. In the distance range between approx. 600 and 1100 km, ground and sky wave may occasionally be of equal size which may lead to mutual fading when both signals are out of phase. On the other hand, equal phase may also lead to a strong temporary increase in the field strength. Both phenomena are also observed in Braunschweig (d = 273 km). In this context it is important to know that this "beat" between ground and sky wave is a slow process (it takes a quarter of an hour and longer) and that there is thus sufficient time for a radio-controlled clock to take up the DCF77 time information.

3. At distances of more than 1100 km, the ground wave fraction constantly decreases, and the sky wave, whose propagation at large distances is fairly constant especially during the day, prevails. At distances between 1100 and 2000 km, field strengths of the sky wave between a few hundred and approx. 100 µV/m are to be expected.

I'd say with the UK one it would very definitely be ground wave. Maybe this is why they dropped the power after switching from the Rugby transmitter. RF propagation can be really weird.

Adding another interesting aspect my son forked out for a radio  controlled wrist watch. It should change time where ever he goes – it would if the standards were all the same so hasn't.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 07/10/2016 16:36:16