Dear Chris,
Thank you for your advise. Yes I have seen the Ebay units below a
hundred dollars. I have been attracted by those units, but I have been
unable to find a USA seller. Most of them are being offered by chinese
ebayers. I haven't ordered anything from China through Ebay yet. Still
I can order anything from the USA.
I have seen frequency adjustable units. 1Hz to 20Mhz. I am still in
diapers in this field of time and frequency experimentation. I am
building a couple of nixie clocks and plan to do some disciplining
using Rubidium, GPS and WWVB. Among all those second hand rubidium
modules, could you please share some advise on brands & models? There
are so many variations. I am aware most of them are in their end of
life cycle. I have learned some can be restored by using focalized
heat on the Rb cells. Still I haven't made a decision. I have a decent
electronics lab at home and could build or test those units to find
their best abilities. Interesting how nowadays those frequency
standards are so readily available.
Your kind comments are always welcome. Thank you all for taking the
time to share ideas and advise with me. I promise to keep the thread
up to the expected standards.
Regards,
Edgardo Molina
XE1XUS
On Jun 30, 2012, at 2:58 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:
Have you checked the price of comparable units in eBay. Many of us
bought
some quite usable Rb oscillators for $40 each but I think the price
might
be up to $60 by now.
On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 11:27 PM, Edgardo Molina <xe1...@amsat.org>
wrote:
Dear Group,
Good morning. I wish you well. This is my first post to the Time-Nuts
group. Please be gentle with the newbie ;)
I have been offered an HP 5065a Rubidium Frequency Standard
recently in
what I feel, a bad operational condition. I need a reliable rubidium
standard for my time/frequency experiments, still I am in doubt to
invest
in buying such and old beast. The general situation of the
instrument (for
what I have been able to see from the first inspection) is:
100 Khz output: Not working, noise coming out of it.
1Mhz output: Working, sine wave clean and not distorted, a couple of
frequency meters showing 1.0000030 Mhz in frequency, the
oscilloscope shows
a transient pulse on top of the sine wave signal and affecting the
frequency readout instantly and then returning to the value
previously
mentioned. Last digits vary sporadically.
5Mhz output: Working. sine wave clean but a little bit distorted when
ramping up. A couple of frequency counters showing 5.0000014 Mhz in
frequency. No transient pulses or other glitches around the output
signal.
Last digits vary sporadically.
No lights coming up when the instrument turned on. No physical
damage of
abuse on case or internal components. No options installed . A
couple of
electrolytic caps replaced on some boards, no trace of burnt PCB
traces or
visible damage to electronic components or physics package. Haven't
got the
manual until today and was unable to check on the front panel
voltages to
check on general health. As turning the voltage test selector knob,
voltage
is shown for most positions, except of course battery and the 100 Khz
oscillator output. Some voltage test positions get the instrument
needle to
go full scale and out of range, other appear to be within scale.
I can perform a second visual and operational inspection today,
this time
with a copy of the instrument manual. I will take my own trusted
frequency
counter and portable digital storage oscilloscope. Would really
appreciate
if I could receive comments from you experts to evaluate if such a
unit
could be worth buying. The asking price is $1K USD. Should I
consider it an
instrument that can be repaired and serviced to show some decent
performance? Or should I look somewhere else to get a decent rubidium
frequency standard.
Thank you beforehand for all your kind and expert comments.
Respectfully,
Edgardo Molina
Mexico City, Mexico
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Redondo Beach, California
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