I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.
The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.
The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.
I've got one that is much worse at locking onto the signal (rugby I assume) than the other one in the same room. I seem to recall that it won't reset until it has had 3 readings of the same time in a row - I guess if it has a borderline signal this might take a while.
Saying that, it worked fine this year but I did see the symptoms you describe last Oct when the clocks went back.
I have had the same problem, the clock does not update the time from the transmitter automatically at 1am/2am/3am as specified in the instructions. When I press the button to update from the transmitter manually nothing happens except a flashing antenna symbol and it eventually this times out.
It did update over the weekend and indicated 'DST' whatever that is and was one hour ahead of UK time.
I often experimented with it, and wondered if local electronic devices are causing reception problems, or reception of the transmissions is too weak, and updates only occur under certain propagation conditions.
I've got both English Oregon and authentic German Clocks bought in Frankfurt which are set to -1 hour time. No problems with the BST switch, but the German ones are definitely more sensitive to radio noise and stop receiving the Hamburg transmitter when close to my computer.
Ah - the one in question lives right next to this computer. However, I've tried moving it to another room - or outside - and still no signal showing. And the computer is shut down when not in use.
Try removing the battery for a few seconds and replacing, to reset the chip. The logic in some clocks seems to screw up, but resetting always gets the radio symbol back for me.
Our cheap alarm clock, which uses the German transmitter, updated itself when it was supposed to... but it is very sensitive to where it's placed. The one we had prior used the Rugby signal, and that was better at getting a signal, but worse at updating...
On this very topic, I noted that the MSF clock on my desk didn't pick up the hour change over the weekend, it always has done before.
I removed and reinstalled the batteries, it still didn't do the necessary.
Earlier this evening I bought a new set of batteries and installed them. Within minutes it had picked up the MSF signal and set itself up.
So don't rule out that the batteries might need replacing.....
Andrew
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My bugbear with these is the pretty analogue ones - one at work intermittently, and one at home consistently, is off by one minute. You take out the battery and reinsert it, the hands sweep majestically round to the nearest of 12, 4, or 8 o'clock, and sit waiting for sync. A coupla minutes later, sync it does: but while the seconds are perfect, the minute hand is one position back from where it should be.
It seems like a fault in either the way the minute hand's been put on the shaft (but surely there's some sort of positioning key!?) or the shaft encoder or whatever feedback mechanism it uses (surely there's
*some* sort of feedback mech to get a reference position for the hands!?), since when I say 'sweep majestically round to ... o'clock', the consistently-faulty one actually sweeps them round majestically to one minute *before* the Starting Position. I've not dared try to pull the hands right off and reposition (well, OK, I *did* dare try, but didn't dare pull more than very gently ;-), and I keep this off-by-one clock in my study, where I know how to interpret its quirk ;-) But it's the sort of thing which sets my perfectionist teeth on edge!
I also have two - the one up here in the study is on Rugby, and changed correctly (well, all right, I didn't stop up all Saturday night to see it do it's stuff, but it was correct early on Sunday), but the kitchen one, which uses the German transmitter, didn't correct itself until Monday.
The fact that it DOES correct itself more or less exonerates the battery (cell actually).
On a few occasions annually the kitchen one seems to go a few hours out for a day or so, so I wonder if their transmissions are prone to some quirkiness...
I'm still amazed that a single (not especially 'high power') AA cell can happily drive a radio receiver, logic circuitry and a clock with big(gish) hands for a year or more :-)
Since there are now more and more devices around with embedded 802.11, I am surprised that nobody has thought of doing a clock which syncs by periodically doing an NTP request.
I built a Rugby one some ~15 years ago. At that time, the German transmitter didn't claim cover much of the UK.
I don't know what sort of aerial the current commercial products use, but if it's a ferrite rod aerial (which is what I used), then these are very directional, and if you rotate the clock by 90º from the ideal position, it will get no signal at all.
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