And if you want to save about $50, there are several OCXO on e-bay for $40-50 (with many offering free shipping). All you do is hook them to 12vdc and coax to the K3EXREF, as most run at +10 dBm. The waveform may not be a perfect sine wave.
--and no satellites were harmed in locking your K3! ;-) My Russian surplus OCXO is rated +/- 5E-12 (phase noise = -150 dBc/Hz at 1-KHz) and runs full time. I also have a Rb, but reserve its use for critical freq. measurements. Phase noise is not an issue when running the K3EXREF as that is established by the K3 TCXO. The external reference serves only to correct TCXO freq. drift every 4-seconds or so. --------------------------- Another good choice is the Trimble Thunderbolt receiver. There are a lot of these refurbished units available on eBay or elsewhere for under $100. You can leave this receiver on full-time if necessary (I do). The Thunderbolt outputs a sine wave at 12.5 dBm. I used an Rb standard borrowed from work for a few days, and found that the Thunderbolt and Rb produced about the same amount of precision. The Rb is noisier though (in the time domain), looking at its output on a spectrum analyzer. You can't beat an OCXO for cleanliness.... 73, Matt W6NIA 73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45 ====================================== BP40IQ 500 KHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com EME: 144-1.4kw, 432-100w, 1296-testing*, 3400-winter? DUBUS Magazine USA Rep [email protected] ====================================== ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
