I am wanting some general advice on the following: I currently have among my timing-related devices a couple of Trimble Thunderbolts (a silver one w/ the inbuilt power supply and a gold flat one), a PRS10, and a TAPR/TICC.
My current end goal is to use these to get an idea of the quality of the 1PPS output from various consumer (not timing) GPS receivers. My thought is to clock the TAPR/TICC from the PRS10, and then just capture the relative timestamp of each 1PPS from the GPS receiver. Using this, I think I should be able to at least get a relatively good histogram of the 1PPS nanosecond phase error, and analyze the number of outliers/missing pulses. Possibly do some other analysis, but that would be a bonus. Feel free to correct my terminology if I've mangled it horribly. My current plan is to mount one of the thunderbolts (probably the silver one for electrical and mechanical reasons) and the PRS10 in a good quality heatsink benchtop instrument case, and power it from a 24V charger+battery array and leave it on permanently. When not in use for the measurement above, I'd just leave the 1PPS from the thunderbolt connected to the PRS10 and use that to discipline the PRS10 and use the outputs from the PRS10 for day-to-day use. However, when I'm doing the 1PPS measurement described above, it seems to me that it is probably best for the PRS10 to be freerunning, to avoid any contamination of the measurement by the PRS10 being disciplined. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) So my question is if the above seems like a reasonable course of action? I also am curious about the best way to switch the PRS10 from disciplined to freerunning/holdover to avoid any contamination from the disconnection of the Thunderbolt. Any other suggestions/hints for doing this type of measurement would be helpful. Assume I know just enough to be dangerous. Thanks, -forrest _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.