Setting the Evil RC clock?

This is one of those Technical articles, that will bore most non-horologists to death. But I'm going to post it here, because of the popularity of these damn RC clocks on today's market- so I'm sure, I'm not the only person who will ever have this problem.

Now that I've started designing and building clocks again, I included two RC (Atomic) clocks in my order from the supplier. Just because they were relatively cheap and a new toy, and I needed one as a replacement movement for my favorite clock, which just wore out recently.

The first of the movements went right into the clock with little trouble, other than thickness of dial issue, that was fixed with a few layers of leftover cardboard. Anyway, it work just fine. I had to manhandle the correct time onto it, a couple times- but it lock right in, and work super, with little effort on my part.

The second movement was the clockworks from HELL! I set it up, on a spare dial, I ordered on impulse, just because it was on sale when I made the order, and it kind of rounded out the number of dials I needed. And then it turned out to be always about 17 minutes off. It was driving my crazy! If it where half hour wrong, you'd just flip the minute hand, but no! 17 minutes +/-, all the time. I tried to advance the hand, with a manual setting (button), and the second it would sync up Colorado, it would be all wrong again! So it worsted case, time to read instructions.

The instruction were like second stage advance guru level, contortionist maneuvers, to get hand registered to 12:00. You reverse the battery for 10 seconds, set it to ST/DST and then your timezone, with battery in or out (?), or pushing the button as hard as you can(?), or sticking a needle in it(?)- AAaagh! I've been challenged a time or two with bad instructions, but I normally figure them out. But this was one of the worsted, I've ever read. Never got it to zero out.

So I started hunting the Internet for better instructions, and basically found some British ones, but they only have one timezone, so the movements for their market seem very different. Anyway, their instructions made the use of the needle that comes with them, more important, than it was with my instructions- apparently they don't have a tab-button on theirs?

Instruction require a basic knowledge of the device. And on this device, there is a tab-button, and short hatpin style needle. And no one seems to know why? Particularly the writers of these instructions.

That knob:
ST= Standard Time (quartz)
ET= Eastern (atomic +0)
CT= Central (atomic +1)
MT= Mountain (atomic +2)
PT=Pacific (atomic +3)
DST=Daylight Saving (quartz)

Tab-button= distraction to anything meaningful. Ok, ok, if you hold it down long enough it advances the time, for setting in quartz mode. It also had something to do with zero out the clock, but good luck with that.

From the British instructions, I finally figured out the needle. Which has very little to do with setting on of these clocks from hell. What it does, is confirm that the clock rolled correctly to the zero position- 12AM, by sliding all the way down into the movement, leaving just the plastic nob against the plastic back. If the minute hand, is directly on a five minute marker, it slip about 3 quarters of the way into the movement. But getting the movement to actually recalibrate back to zero, was impossible!

I decided, once it's an open face clock- to just manhandle those hands until I got it right. And from spending a few DAYS doing this, I finally figured it out! If you have one of RC clocks from hell, pay attention:

We people run on Minutes. Seconds are a novelty, only important in how fast an animal can run, or how long your film is in the developer. Computers run on milliseconds, because they're much much faster than we are, at just about everything, and because they have little else to do or think about most of the time. So while your thinking about getting minute hand in order (17 minutes off), and your computer is thinking about milliseconds since 1970, these damn RC movements are only concerned with Seconds that passed since midnight! And about every 90 minutes or so, they look for resynchronization. So just about the time, you think you've got it- IT CHANGES! Like the moving target that it is.

To fix it, manhandling it, you've got to observe these facts. If you push the minute hand (17 minutes off), forward or backward, the second hand moves radically. And there's the key! You have to have a second hand on the clock, and a tight fitting one, to re-register that incorporative minute hand to the correct minute (-17 minutes or -1020 seconds). That pin they gave you, was just to drive you crazy, playing with the movement, as was that tab-button on the back! The key is to the second hand, and minute hand in sync with each other. So hold the second hand down, while you move the minute hand with another finger- in 90 minutes, you can make another small tweak until it's set right.

The secret is, seconds since midnight! And that what you need to know, to get an RC clock to set right. And the good news is that you can manhandle it into place on an open face clock! Once that minute hand is working right, you can pull that second hand off, and throw it away. It would only be important if some jerk put these into chiming movements (gad)!

And here ends the entertaining side of the story!

Here, begins real instructions for setting (manhandling) your evil RC clock:
1) Put a good brand new battery in the movement.
2) Put a tight fitting sweep second hand on the clock.
3) Wait one full day, or until you see it synchronize with the atomic clock!
3) Push the hour hand to the correct time.
4) Wait 90 minutes, play with buttons and switches if you like, then set it to your correct timezone, and wait one full day!
5) Use your thumb to stop the second hand, while your index finger changes the minutes. Beware that the second hand can run in both directions, hold it down tight!
6) Repeat step 5 as needed until the clock is in perfect sync.
7) Pull the second hand off, and store it in a very safe place that you'll soon forget about, until you've replaced it with a new one.
8) Ignore all instructions about flipping batteries over backwards, and forwards, and poking needles into things- manhandling works best!