(I hope this didn't go out before but it seems it was stuck in my out box) Thanks for the comments from Steve, Gregg, Eric, Mike and others.
Having been a television engineer for several years and worked for a small company in Redwood City, CA, called Ampex Corp., I am well aware of the uses of the color burst frequency. But it can be very inaccurate because it all depends on whether your local station is locked to a network signal or using their local color burst/sync generator. If they are locked to a network signal, since all of the networks use a rubidium standards back east, they should be very accurate. But if they are just gen-locking to their local generator through a frame lock box, then they could be way off. Many stations used to do this so that they could lock their field cams to the local off air signal so they could smoothly switch to remotes without rolling pictures. I wouldn't trust any local 3.58 as an accurate source unless I worked there and knew how the system was configured at any particular instant. Still this is quite a low frequency and not very convenient to compare with the local 10 MHz timebase of most monitors. Yes, we do have a local TV station in Denver that supposedly is locked to WWV's rubidium standard up in Fort Collins. It is channel 7 and their video carrier is (179.250). I often use it in the field for quick check calibrations as it is seldom more than 60 cycles off at 179,250,000. (after previously setting my timebase against WWV) It;s just that I would like to have something much, much more accurate (that's my obsession) as a standard and so far I have not forked out the cash for a GPS system timebase. My other quest is to find some easy way, preferably visual, to compare the two signals phase when setting my IFR timebase. Guess I'm going to have to start saving my pennies for a GPS receiver. Art - KC7GF Golden, CO Also thanks for the heads up on the cell sites, I will check that option out too. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
