Re: [time-nuts] 100 MHz Source

I have a HP70310A. It's the time reference for the HP/Agilent modular MMS system. It seems that the ebay prices for this stuff varies quite a lot depending on random factors. I think I got mine for a couple of hundred dollars. It has a McCoy OCXO and provides 10MHz and 100MHz outputs. You c

Re: [time-nuts] Power monitoring

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jim Lux writ > es: > >>> As long as I'm dreaming... Suppose I wanted to measure the power my whole >>> house is drawing. What's available along the lines of a current transformer >>> on the main lines? My first thought is that nobody

Re: [time-nuts] Racal-Dana 1992 switches

How do you pick the optimal difference frequency? I see that 1kHz has a nice numerical property where you can read the frequency directly off the counter, you just need to mentally prepend the first 4 digits. With computers it's not that important, the difference can easily be a strange number

Re: [time-nuts] TADD-1 six channel RF distribution amplifier

Bruce Griffiths wrote: > Steve wrote: >> I'm thinking about using the TAPR TADD-1 six channel RF distribution >> amplifier to distribute the 10MHz output of my Trimble Thunderbolt to a >> few pieces of test equipment. >> >> What does the TADD-1 do to the phase noise characteristics of its >> ou

Re: [time-nuts] GPS PRN07 tracking

And they turned off PRN 10 the next day after making PRN 07 valid. It's like they're playing GPS wack-a-mole. jeff Magnus Danielson wrote: > Hi! > > Earlier this month the launched the latest of the GPS IIR-M sats, and today I > had the oppertunity to observe it. It seems it was brought quickl

Re: [time-nuts] 58532a ANTENNA CABLE?

I use 100 feet of LMR-400, which is fantastic, but overkill. It probably loses about 6db for 100-feet at 1.5GHz. There are a lot of online vendors that will sell you any length you want with N-type connectors on both ends. jeff jshank wrote: > Hi, > I am in the process of setting up a Z3801

Re: [time-nuts] Close-in phase noise measurements

This is a half-baked idea I've thinking about for awhile. I wonder if it might be possible to create a single measurement to combine allan variance and phase noise in the same plot. Allan variance usually plots tau in seconds on the x-axis. Instead, you might plot 1/s or frequency on the x-a

Re: [time-nuts] Buffering the 1pps output from a Z3801A

That's a cool box, but I took a more quick and dirty approach that has served me well. There's a TTL level PPS inside the box, if I remember correctly the part has quite a lot of drive and is fine for driving a 50-ohm cable. I needed a proper UTC PPS signal for a radio astronomy project and I

Re: [time-nuts] hp 5065A Rb AC power connector ?

Tom Van Baak wrote: >> Does anyone know the Amphenol part number for this one? The manual >> gives only an HP part number... >> >> Thanks, >> Dan > > MS-3106A-18-22S; see also: > > http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/hp5065a/conn.htm > > /tvb > You are getting way too organized... jeff _

Re: [time-nuts] FEI 5680A

I think that I might purchase a GPS disciplined oscillator instead of rubidium standard for a cal lab. There's no physics package in danger of wearing out and no worries about local settings changing accuracy. They are also low power and something like the Trimble unit is very compact. jeff

Re: [time-nuts] SVN23/PRN32 useable

My Z3801A finally came around this pass without any external prodding: http://www.mock.com/test/z3801a/ jeff Bruce Griffiths wrote: > My Motorola M12+T had no problem acquiring and tracking PRN32 once the > new almanac was loaded. > It also had no difficulty in dropping PRN 32 when it dropp

[time-nuts] Atomic clock on ISS

Today's astronomy picture of the day says that future experiments in the new ISS Columbus laboratory include an atomic clock to measure miniscule timing effects: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080219.html Does anyone know somthing about the sort of clock they're going to put in the n

Re: [time-nuts] 5370B practical question

Usually this sort of thing is the caused by settings on the input side of the counter, termination, trigger level, etc. Since the anomaly is so consistent and assuming that you've checked all of the usual suspects, I would look at the VCOs on a spectrum analyzer and see if there are any unusua

Re: [time-nuts] Clock Powers of Ten

Very nice, it reminded me of a NYT article about a year ago that describes "the long zoom" as one of the defining aspects of this generation: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html?ei=5090&en=d551133c9414ebbd&ex=131796&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all jeff John

Re: [time-nuts] Fake leap second ntp servers

There's probably a good NTP hacker hanging around on this list, but the best place to answer your question is probably the NTP hackers mailing list: https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo jeff Maciej Żenczykowski wrote: > Hey folks, > > I just joined your email list to inquire about someth

Re: [time-nuts] Prologix, Linux and bash

I have excellent luck using a Prologix device on a couple of different machines running ubuntu linux (7.04 and 7.10). I find it totally painless. You might run usbview and see if the device is being recognized or look at /var/log/messages while plugging in the device. Something like: % s

Re: [time-nuts] accurate portable time source

Ronald Held wrote: > This request is different than the last one. > The most accurate TCXO watch is about 1 seconds/year, with regular > wear and lots of adjustment. [...] Really? What watch is good to 1s per year? Can you point me at one? That's amazing for a watch. jeff __

Re: [time-nuts] Stuff I bought

Neon John wrote: > On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:30:05 -0800, Jeff Mock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> Smart Tweezers >> http://www.advancedevices.com/ >> >> It's an RLC meter packaged in a pair of tweezers. It's accurate and >> fast, feels

Re: [time-nuts] Stuff I bought

Brooke Clarke wrote: > > I have a Suunto wrist computer and like it very much. The normal time, date, > alarm, stop watch functions plus compass, altimeter/barometer and thermometer. > Which compass did you get? > I didn't get the wristwatch, The Suunto tandem is a hunk of aluminum with a liq

Re: [time-nuts] Wideband distribution amplifier

Do you need gain? I think that I would stick with minicircuits splitters and avoid a lot of hassle. jeff Geraldo Lino de Campos wrote: > I got a PTS3200 (1-3200 MHz) synthesizer, and would like to have a > distribution amplifier for it. I couldn't find any schematics on the > net. > > Since un

[time-nuts] Stuff I bought

I hope this might start a holiday thread of cool stuff other people have purchased recently. Here are a few things that I've bought this year that I really like. jeff -- Smart Tweezers http://www.advancedevices.com/ It's an RLC meter packaged in a pair of tweezers. It's accurate and fas

Re: [time-nuts] WIRED Time Nuts, NPR

I think you were just great. The Bryant Park personalities seem to adopt this position that they use a lot of technology, but they'll act like a dufus if they actually discuss some technology. They like to say "blog" a lot, but never with understanding about how internet tech works. I think i

Re: [time-nuts] Units of Fame

Well, if Lamm is the unit for for fame, Kath must be be the unit for stupidity, google will fill in the gaps. The funniest one I heard is that the standard measure for ego is the Mandelbroit. If you've ever heard him speak, you can see that like the Farad it's most often found as pico- or micr

[time-nuts] SVN37 offline

I'm sure you all noticed, SVN37 (PRN07) went offline today. I tracked it yesterday afternoon, but it is gone today: http://www.mock.com/test/z3801a/ Looks like it might be gone for good, now we only have 29 GPS satellites online... ftp://tycho.usno.navy.mil/pub/gps/gps.txt jeff

Re: [time-nuts] need recomendation for a portable 10mhz referenceoscilator

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi Bill, > > a Rubidium would take about 15 to 20 Watts, and they don't usually work at > 12V battery voltage typically. > > At 20 Watts we would consume 1.67A at 12V, so a (large) 80Ah car batt would > only last two days in best conditions at room temperature.

Re: [time-nuts] Super stable BVA Quartz resonators... BVA??

Thanks for the description, it is very interesting. I have a follow up question if you don't mind. How does crystal aging look on a graph of temp versus frequency. This graph has some temperature point where the slope of frequency variation goes to zero and the crystal is quite stable around

Re: [time-nuts] HP 8566B repair

recalibrate the pretune/driver system, or reach a particular > step that you can't complete. > > -- john, KE5FX > >> -Original Message- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Behalf Of Jeff Mock >> Sent: Thursday, December 06,

[time-nuts] HP 8566B repair

Does anyone have any suggestions or advice about 8566B repair? I've had an 8566B for 7-8 years, it's been a faithful tool, never had a problem with it. It's reasonably clean unit that's never seen a tough life. It sits in the storeroom 90% of the time and is on my bench maybe 10% of the time.

Re: [time-nuts] Cesium Oscialltors and Low Phase Noise Frequency Standard

It sounds like a really nice oscillator. I'm sure that everyone would love to hear about the challenges and tradeoffs in designing such a high performance quartz oscillator. Do you guys cut your own crystals? How much of the improvement comes from a better SC-cut crystal and how much from bett

[time-nuts] Modulation on Rb sources

I have a couple of Rb sources and went looking for spurs close to the carrier. One was particularly surprising. First is a GPS disciplined Rb oscillator from Berkeley Varitronics. I'm not a big fan of this box, but that's another story. Here's plot of 500Hz around 10MHz, it looks like the 10

Re: [time-nuts] Chronometer contest sponsored by IEEE Spectrum

I found this article randomly this evening, it has some interesting tidbits about quartz oscillators in watches. I had never heard of the venerable Sieko "twin quartz" from 1978, good to +/- 5 seconds a year: http://people.timezone.com/msandler/Articles/CarlosFinalParadigm/FinalParadigm.html

Re: [time-nuts] EU funds Galileo

As a hard working US tax payer, I'm happy that someone is paying for an excuse to buy another disciplined oscillator one day... lots more plots, quibbling about differences in the 10 decimal point, etc. jeff Javier wrote: > As a hard working ES tax payer, I think that the funds are right there

Re: [time-nuts] More details on IEEE Spectrum clock competition

Philip, I think this sounds pretty reasonable, here's my 2-cents worth. I think calibration should be part of delivering the clock. You can imagine a designer developing elaborate models for the timebase and you don't want to stifle creativity here. I think calibration is part of the deliver

Re: [time-nuts] Chronometer contest sponsored by IEEE Spectrum

>> I think that I would start by looking at 32kHz watch crystals, I've >> often wondered how good a timebase you can make out of one. The tempco >> is a parabola around 25C with a max slope of something like 0.05 PPM/C, >> so they are naturally a pretty good timebase with good aging >> charac

Re: [time-nuts] Of rubidium life and piggy-bank anemia....

John Ackermann N8UR wrote: > > But on the other hand, having a free-running Rb that you calibrate > against the Tbolt (or some other reference) every so often isn't a bad > idea; it gives you a source that's independent of external factors. > > John This was the road to hell for me :) I bough

Re: [time-nuts] Chronometer contest sponsored by IEEE Spectrum

Jeffrey Pawlan wrote: > > On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, David Forbes wrote: >> It might be more fun to require that an OCXO be designed and built by >> the DIY-er out of commercially available crystals and resistors. That >> way, it's an engineering challenge instead of a procurement >> challenge, since I

Re: [time-nuts] HP 8924C's on ebay

as a general RF communication tester. However, I don't know the > differences with the 8924, but in any case, I would be very carefull > before purchasing it :). > > Best regards, > > Javier, EA1CRB > > Jeff Mock escribió: >> There seem to be a bunch of HP8924

[time-nuts] HP 8924C's on ebay

There seem to be a bunch of HP8924C's up on ebay for about $1500. It's intended function is for CDMA testing, but it seems to be a pretty general RF communications tester. Even if you don't care about the CDMA stuff, it's a 1GHz spectrum analyzer, RF signal generator that can be used as a trac

Re: [time-nuts] OT: Prologix GPIB and HP3478A...

it > detects EOI. By checking for the character you can determine if EOI was > asserted. > > Regards, > Abdul > > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Jeff Mock > > > I have a slightly off-topic question ab

Re: [time-nuts] Collecting raw timing data

Bruce Griffiths wrote: > Jeff Mock wrote: >> Thanks so much, your description of collecting the raw timing data is >> really clear. I like the technique of doing timing interval >> measurements from a slower known reference on one channel to a DUT on a >> second cha

Re: [time-nuts] OT: Prologix GPIB and HP3478A...

Prologix wrote: > > One solution is to turn read-after-write off (++auto 0) before connecting > the adapter to 3478A, and then use ++read command to read one measurement at > a time. Please see the manual (www.prologix.biz) for ++read command options. > I nearly always turn off auto mode on the

Re: [time-nuts] Collecting raw timing data

software from > Ulrich Bangert on mu web page: > > http://www.ko4bb.com/Timing/FAQ-1.html > > Look for "Practical Example" near the bottom. > > Didier KO4BB > >> -Original Message- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On

[time-nuts] Collecting raw timing data

This is mostly a question for tvb. How are you collecting raw timing timing data to calculate a typical Allan deviation plot? Something like: http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/hp58503b/log19395v.gif I've been fiddling with my HP53132A to get the right combination of settings to collect use

Re: [time-nuts] 53131A or 5370B

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Errors-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] RETRY Bernd T-Online wrote: > Hi Tom, > > Tom Clark, K3IO wrote: >>I have been a strong advocate for the 53131/2 counter since I first >>encountered in in 1993. Most of my applications are for a time-interval >>counter (