Re: [time-nuts] Conducting Bench Top Material

2010-01-27 Thread Rex

Steve Rooke wrote:

Wasn't life so much easier with valves (tubes)...

Nostalgia?

Valves (tubes) warmer in close proximity, yes. Global warming should 
make that, on average, less helpful.


In the 60's listening to rock music, I could look at the final tubes in 
a dark room and see the purple glow inside dance with the music.

Anyone else?
Solid state amps just can't do that. Way cool. I never tried it with 
cannabis, but probably even better.


Other than that memory, and certain trade-offs at big Rf power, I'll say 
I no longer encourage the glowing bulbs for most things.




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Re: [time-nuts] Injection locking

2010-02-11 Thread Rex

Kit Scally wrote:

...

On a related topic, I found some while ago - and promptly lost - a
graph/chart showing harmonic level variations with varying duty-cycle of
an input waveform.  This was to some degree a graphical representation
of the Wenzel document referenced by Bruce recently.  Has anyone got a
link to this document please ?


Kit
VK2LL 

  


Is this the Wenzel document you are referring to?
http://www.wenzel.com/pdffiles1/pdfs/choose.pdf  ("Choosing a Frequency 
Multiplier's Waveform")


Figure 2 in that doc is a graph of Harmonic Amplitudes vs. pulse width. 
Is that what you were looking for? There are a couple of bar charts too, 
for specific duty cycles.





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Re: [time-nuts] Jupiter GPS Receivers, ( V1.80)

2010-02-22 Thread Rex
I forgot what your goal was, but if you just want an accurate 10 MHz / 1 
pps reference, why not just buy a Thunderbolt or Z3805A?


Many on this list have had good results dealing with fluke.l on ebay. I 
just did a search (select 'advanced search' and put fluke.l in the 
seller field down the page) and he has several Tbolts starting at $150 
and at least one Z3805A at $350. Seems to me you'll get instant 
gratification and probably better results than with a Jupiter receiver. 
Or you can search on thunderbolt or Z3805A. There are probably other 
sellers - I only looked at fluke.l's listings.


BTW, in the name fluke.l, the letter after the '.' is lower case L, not 
one (as has been mistyped on recent postings.)


Unless you enjoy the challenge of reinventing this GPS-timing wheel, I'd 
suggest buying one of these reasonably priced units.


-Rex


ashle...@aol.com wrote:
Hi to the list 
 Anyone out there in Time Nuts Land have a working Jupiter receiver (V1.80) or newer they are not currently using and would like to trade for $$ ?


Thanks !!



 
 
Thank You

Kiss-Electronics
Ms Ashley Hall
183 N 5th Avenue
Cornelius, Oregon
97113
 
 
W7DUZ
 
 
www.kiss-electronics.com

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Re: [time-nuts] Achieving maximum performance when driving 5370A/Binputs

2010-02-28 Thread Rex

Don Latham wrote:
I've fixed shafts like this carefully with plastic swizzle sticks and 
super glue. Did I say carefully? a little dab'll do ya...

Don



It is a tricky business. The 5370A I got a while back, had what was left 
of the shaft glued into the bushing by an earlier repair attempt. The 
shaft plastic is not one that fuses easily (polyethylene maybe). I 
managed to repair mine, but the process I used took many hours and I 
wouldn't recommend it. I removed the pot and was able to disassemble it. 
I then drilled a very small hole down the center axis of the shaft and 
used a section of very small screw rod to reinforce the joint. That 
combined with glue has held up so far. For the repair, I made a tool to 
align the drill to the shaft. The pot is not intended to come apart and 
is small. An evil job.


I thought the 5370B had gone to a steel-shaft version of these pots. 
Maybe it depends on vintage.




- Original Message - From: "Mark Sims" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 10:10 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] Achieving maximum performance when driving 
5370A/Binputs





If it's the one that I think it is...  look closely at the photo.  
The shafts on two of the pots are sheared off at the panel.   These 
are the display update control and the external arming level 
control.   These were custom HP pots with a funky (and delicate)  
switch.  They had brittle plastic shafts.Gee,  how do I know 
this...  could it be that a large percentage of the 5370's for sale 
have the same defect?


Luckily those controls are not too critical for normal operation.  
They can be replaced with regular (switchless) pots if you jumper the 
switch pads correctly.  Be careful,  there were two different layouts 
to those controls.



--
So exactly how did you know that I bought a (cheap) 5370B a few hours 
ago on the e-place





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Re: [time-nuts] FE-5680A

2010-03-10 Thread Rex

Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

Like pretty much every other rubidium on the planet - no, not as far as I know. 

Most of the test points and adjustments are of the "even if we told you, you aren't set up to use it" nature. Put another way, they would have to provide a lot of proprietary information to enable you to do anything. 

A more cynical view would be "if it breaks we want to sell you another one". 


My personal experience suggests that setting one up is indeed a black art known 
only to the select few. The high priest takes them into the back room and they 
magically come return in working order several days / weeks / what ever later.  
High priest goes on vacation - not much is going to ship 

Bob


On Mar 10, 2010, at 9:23 PM, Larry Snyder wrote:

  

Hi all --
I have the info for setting up the output freq.  Has anyone managed
to snag the info for the test points and adjustments in this beast?
thanx!
-ls-





Well, I agree to a point.

I had some documentation on a Ball Efratom rubidium that had detailed 
theory sections and guidance on how to align the oscillator to the cell 
signal. It even had schematics of all the boards. So not every rubidium 
manufacturer was always guarding all the information.


On the other hand, in my experience, FEI is not a company that is 
willing to share anything unless big bags of money and a contract are 
involved. Some of the information I have seen is bits of general 
documentation saved by those in the loop long ago. The majority of other 
helpful information seems to have been dug out by determined reverse 
engineering or experimentation of a few determined individuals.


Documentation on most of the HP or Spectracom GPS or atomic stuff seems 
to be pretty sketchy too.




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Re: [time-nuts] HP 5065A - phosphoric acid

2010-03-21 Thread Rex

paul swed wrote:

Were do you obtain a small amount of phosphoric acid
Also when I looked it up they said it was H3PO4. Doesn't sound like the
same.
Is there a common use for it?

  
I bought a quart a while ago at Home Depot in the paint section. Jasco 
Prep and Primer for metal - a liquid. Mostly phosphoric acid but with a 
few extra ingredients, I think. Pretty sure it would work ok for solder 
prep. As usual, the sales person in the paint section was of no help. I 
asked for phosphoric acid and got a blank stare; explained it is use to 
prep metal for painting. Still, "no, I don't think we have that." I did 
an extensive search myself and found it on a shelf. I showed the sales 
guy and got a disinterested, "oh."


If you live in a hard water area, it will also remove heavy scale 
deposits in sinks, showers, etc.



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Re: [time-nuts] What time is it anyway?

2010-03-28 Thread Rex

Steve Rooke wrote:

What puzzles me is who is the keeper of "legal time" for the other
93.4% of land mass and 95.5% of population of the World other than the
US.

  


Just curious where you got those percentage numbers? A quick check says 
they are in the ball park, but wondering where you got them.




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Re: [time-nuts] Surplus Places...

2010-03-31 Thread Rex

jimlux wrote:

Scott Burris wrote:

C&H closed briefly to move and is now open in Duarte:

http://www.candhsurplus.com/

At Apex, a friend tried to purchase a nose cone from a rocket, but 
they declined
to sell it to him because they were making too much money renting it 
out to movie studios.


Scott




That is precisely the reason for outrageous prices at Apex.  If it 
makes  a good prop (spinning mag tape drives, panels with lots of 
switches and lights, etc.) then they can make hundreds of dollars a 
week in rental.




Maybe, I don't hang out in LA land much.

I went somewhere once and am pretty sure it must have been Apex - had 
the same random back yard. I found a couple big-ass bearings, close to 3 
inch ID. I had some project in mind and they gave me a reasonable price, 
maybe $5 each, So, lots of stuff is over priced, but maybe if you browse 
a while, you may find some stuff that can be negotiated at a mutual 
advantage.


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Re: [time-nuts] New Most Accurate Clock

2010-04-01 Thread Rex
I just realized that the recent big transfers of money from Washington 
DC to Wall Street must have been a large-scale test of the MANA system.


-Rex...
heading to Home Depot to find a large container I can adapt into a MANA 
antenna.



Tom Van Baak wrote:

I used the new google today and found that a new type
of atomic clock has been developed which promises a
revolution in timekeeping.
Typically national physics laboratories, such as NIST in
the United States, develop the most precise atomic clocks.
But today the best clock comes from NUTS, a quiet but
intense collection of clock enthusiasts, with too much time
on their hands. Read the full story here:

www.LeapSecond.com/unclock.htm

/tvb


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Re: [time-nuts] Naval Jelly at home depot 25-35% Phosphoric acid

2010-04-11 Thread Rex
I mentioned in an earlier thread that I found Jasco Prep and Primer at 
Home Depot, but that was several years back. I don't know if it is still 
stocked. The stuff is a blue-green liquid and mostly phosphoric acid. 
The naval jelly that I have seen actually was a jelly so it would stick 
better on vertical surfaces for its intended rust stripping use.



paul swed wrote:

Seems like a liquid, it shakes. But its officially naval jelly NJ1. Look up
the msds. Thats how I found the % of mix

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 5:45 PM, J. L. Trantham  wrote:

  

Is it Naval Jelly or liquid phosphoric acid?

Joe

-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On
Behalf Of paul swed
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 4:42 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Naval Jelly at home depot 25-35% Phosphoric acid


Home depot paint department

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 4:41 PM, J. L. Trantham  wrote:



Where do you get it?

Joe

-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com]
On Behalf Of Bill
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2010 5:45 PM
To: 'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Naval Jelly at home depot 25-35% Phosphoric
acid


I keep at least a couple of gallons of phosphoric acid on hands at all
time


  



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Re: [time-nuts] oscillator choice question (ND100M)

2010-05-03 Thread Rex

Chris, your links don't work.


ch...@yipyap.com wrote:


just for show-and-tell:

...



I have four rough pictures.

www.yipyap.com/radio_stuff/ND100M/One.pdf  is right (rear)
end of the component side.

www.yipyap.com/radio_stuff/ND100M/Four.pdf is the left (front)
end of the component side.

www.yipyap.com/radio_stuff/ND100M/Two.pdf is a blurry closeup
of the center from the trace side.

www.yipyap.com/radio_stuff/ND100M/Three.pdf shows the
power connector  (+13.6, -11), two series resistors on those
power lines, and 8 output lines.  Some of the outputs are
10 Mhz.  At least one is 1 Mhz.




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Re: [time-nuts] (no subject)

2010-05-21 Thread Rex

Robert Benward wrote:

Hi,
I just purchased a Z3805A at the Dayton hamfest this past weekend.  How do I 
get it to work?  Do I need software to run this, or can it run stand alone. 
I have turned it on, but only the power light comes on, the GPS lock, and 
more importantly, the enable light is not on.  There is an 10MHz output, but 
the holdover light is not on.  Is there any freeware available?  Any 
recommendations?


Any opinions on this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/GPS-Receiver-Program-HP-Z3801A-Z3805A-Z3816A-58540A-/250566043297?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a56e666a1

Thank you in advance.

Bob
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Re: [time-nuts] (no subject)

2010-05-21 Thread Rex

Sorry about the empty post -- hit the send key by accident.

Ulrich's free Z38XX program works great as a monitor for the Z3805. He 
added some stuff to specifically support differences from a Z3801. The 
Z3801 programs can be used but can't support the extra satellites the 
3805 can track.


Available here: http://www.ulrich-bangert.de/html/downloads.html

The lower 25-pin connector is the serial port you want to connect your 
PC to. Someone mentioned 488; I think that is only on Z3801's. My Z3805 
has a serial interface on the lower 25-pin connector.


You do know that you need an external active GPS antenna, I hope? You 
never mentioned that you had connected one.


It takes a long time to lock the first time in a new location because it 
has to do a survey first. You can make it go a bit quicker if you use 
the monitor program to set your latitude an longitude close first. The 
box should eventually lock without a PC monitoring, but you will, no 
doubt, feel much better if you can see the satellites it is tracking and 
any status messages as it goes through the process.


The monitor commands are very similar to the Z3801. You should be able 
to find some Z3801 user documentation and command reference docs on the net.


Hope that helps a bit.

-Rex

Robert Benward wrote:

Hi,
I just purchased a Z3805A at the Dayton hamfest this past weekend.  How do I 
get it to work?  Do I need software to run this, or can it run stand alone. 
I have turned it on, but only the power light comes on, the GPS lock, and 
more importantly, the enable light is not on.  There is an 10MHz output, but 
the holdover light is not on.  Is there any freeware available?  Any 
recommendations?


Any opinions on this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/GPS-Receiver-Program-HP-Z3801A-Z3805A-Z3816A-58540A-/250566043297?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a56e666a1

Thank you in advance.

Bob
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Re: [time-nuts] Z3805 utility, Was: AW: (no subject)

2010-05-23 Thread Rex
ation specific to either the Z3816A or the 
Z3805A, but there are some docs for the Z3801A and the 58503B that are 
close enough to guess most of what is needed. If you haven't found them 
yet, I could try to search where I found what I have used.


-Rex


Robert Benward wrote:

Thank you all for these inputs!

Most importantly, the big question is:  Regardless of RS-232 or 422, 
will the unit do ANYTHING without communications? Do I need a computer 
to get anything beyond the "power" led?


I bought this at the Dayton convention ham flea market, and the guy 
told me it was already modified for RS-232.  The board inside says 
RS-422 near the connector.  Without the other LEDs blinking, I'm 
worried I bought a dead unit.  I had a GPS antenna on it, but it never 
locked on.  Do I need a computer to enable this thing?


Thanks,
Bob



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Re: [time-nuts] Z3805 utility, Was: AW: (no subject)

2010-05-23 Thread Rex
I see Ulrich was sending the message below as I was composing the other 
message I just sent. I think we have both given information about the 
serial connection that should be helpful.


Please note one thing that I included in my other message, that I 
confirmed tonight. The Z3805A serial port defaults to 9600 8 N 1 but all 
of those parameters can be changed with commands. The PC software must 
be configured to match or there will be no communication. I didn't 
power-cycle my Z3805 but I assume if I changed the port parameters and 
then powered off/on the z3805, it would probably retain this new port 
configuration.



Ulrich Bangert wrote:

Bob,

even without a computer connected the beast should do SOMETHING. In
conjunction with a pc and a running communication it is easier to judge WHAT
it currently does. 


To establish communication first find out what pinning the RS232 connector
has: with the negative cable (black) of a voltmeter connected to Pin 7 of
the RS232 connector check pins 2 & 3 with the positive cable (red) for the
presence of a NEGATIVE voltage of a few Volts. If you can measure a negative
voltage on one of the pins, you have successfully identified the Z3805's
TRANSMIT pin. The other pin of 2/3 is the receive pin. 


Then solder a cable in this way

Z3805 Transmit pin  -> Pin 2 of pc RS232 port (9 pole D-Sub assumed)
Z3805 Receive pin   -> Pin 3 of pc RS232 port (9 pole D-Sub assumed)
Z3805 Ground (7)-> Pin 5 of pc RS232 port (9 pole D-Sub assumed) 


Should you have a 25 pin connector for RS232 at your pc then the cable is

Z3805 Transmit pin  -> Pin 3 of pc RS232 port
Z3805 Receive pin   -> Pin 2 of pc RS232 port 
Z3805 Ground (7)-> Pin 7 of pc RS232 port


No other connection is needed. With a cable like this start Z38XX and check
that you that you choose the correct Com-Port for communication in the
Parameters window. And yes, I know, being an owner of a Z3805 I should know
exactly but I don't remember the day that I made the cable and I currently
cannot access the back of my Z3805. 


Best regards
Ulrich Bangert 

  



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Re: [time-nuts] Z3805 utility, Was: AW: (no subject)

2010-05-24 Thread Rex

Robert Benward wrote:

Checked wires, measured voltages, -0.5 and +2.0 on TX and RX.

Bob


That does sound very odd if it is RS232.

Have you measured these voltages out of the Z38xx unit into just an open 
cable? That would take any driving or loading from the PC-end serial 
port out of the measurement.


BTW. Last I read here, you seemed to now think that you actually have a 
Z3801A. If that is correct, maybe it would be nice to start a new thread 
with a proper heading to reduce confusion for anyone searching the 
archives in the future.




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Re: [time-nuts] (no subject)

2010-05-24 Thread Rex

Steve,

If the Furuno pdf's , you have, are more than just the sales fluff, I'd 
suggest you upload the files to Didier's web pages

http://www.ko4bb.com/cgi-bin/manuals.pl?dir=05%29_GPS_Timing

That page has an upload link in the upper-right corner.

I don't think I have ever seen more than just a simple spec sheet on the 
Furuno receiver.



Steve Rooke wrote:

Bob,

On 24 May 2010 03:40, Robert Benward  wrote:
  

Hi All,
Does anyone have a manual for this Z3805A?  Schematics?



If you find one, I'd certainly be interested. What I do have is some
pdfs on the Furuno GT80 receiver which is used in the device. These
were kindly sent me by Craig Miller and I can PM them directly to you
if you wish, just let me know.

Cheers,
Steve

  



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Re: [time-nuts] Furno GPS Rcvr, Was: no subject)

2010-05-24 Thread Rex

Thanks. That is more than I had seen before.

Looks like they basically talk NMEA. Maybe one day I'll look into this. 
For my Z3816, I made a PIC-based LCD display for time and status. It 
tapped into the serial stream from the Oncore GPS receiver inside the 
box. Looks like the same could be done here, but with completely 
different parsing.



Steve Rooke wrote:

Hi Rex,

On 25 May 2010 08:32, Rex  wrote:
  

Steve,

If the Furuno pdf's , you have, are more than just the sales fluff, I'd
suggest you upload the files to Didier's web pages
http://www.ko4bb.com/cgi-bin/manuals.pl?dir=05%29_GPS_Timing

That page has an upload link in the upper-right corner.

I don't think I have ever seen more than just a simple spec sheet on the
Furuno receiver.



I've uploaded the hardware and protocol specs for the GT8031 which was
the best that could be obtained from Furuno to date. These are fully
detailed and I expect the protocol spec is pretty close if not the
same as for the GT80. So far I have only tried a couple of the simple
commands, not wanting to screw things up in my Z3805A.

Steve

  

Steve Rooke wrote:


Bob,

On 24 May 2010 03:40, Robert Benward  wrote:

  

Hi All,
Does anyone have a manual for this Z3805A?  Schematics?



If you find one, I'd certainly be interested. What I do have is some
pdfs on the Furuno GT80 receiver which is used in the device. These
were kindly sent me by Craig Miller and I can PM them directly to you
if you wish, just let me know.

Cheers,
Steve


  

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Re: [time-nuts] Motorola GPS Z3801A

2010-06-01 Thread Rex

Robert Benward wrote:

Hi,
Does anyone have the pinouts for the Motorola GPS within the Z3801A?  It's a 
ten pin header and I would like to intercept the data stream to see if it's 
working.  Also, I read about some of the Motorolas putting out binary data, 
not NEMA protocol.


Thanks,
Bob
  
The Oncore interface diagram on Didier's page should be enough to see 
which pins are which:

http://www.ko4bb.com/cgi-bin/manuals.pl?dir=05%29_GPS_Timing

For the details, here's a link to a nice clean Oncore manual:
http://gpsd.berlios.de/vendor-docs/motorola/

Chapter 6 of that manual is a description of the Oncore commands that 
are used by these receivers. Yes, it is a mixture of ASCII commands with 
binary data.


I forget which receiver(s) the Z3801A used. My Z3816a has a UT+ but it 
is a little more recent than the 3801's. Someone here, no doubt, remembers.


A few years back there were a bunch of posts to this list with reference 
documents for the various Oncores that HP or Symmetricom used in the 
timing receivers. Lots of detail of firmware versions and differences 
between the Oncore receivers. I don't have a link now. Maybe others do.




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Re: [time-nuts] Motorola GPS Z3801A

2010-06-01 Thread Rex

Robert Benward wrote:

Matt,
It's been modified.  I was told that when I bought  it, and confirmed 
it myself.  I don't get the right voltages; I need a new RS-232 
interface chip.


Bob

I never heard an answer about if you had measured the voltages at the 
Z3801A connector open circuit (nothing attached that could be loading or 
driving what you are measuring).




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Re: [time-nuts] Motorola GPS Z3801A

2010-06-01 Thread Rex
The only unit I know about that uses the Furuno receiver is the Z3805. 
The earlier standards used the Motorola Oncores. My Z3816 has a UT+ 
version. Another post tonight says the Z3801 uses the VT version, which 
sounds right. These Z38xx's have some similarities but also significant 
differences between each other.


The time order in which these references were produced (older to newer) 
is: 3801, 3816, 3805. That aligns with the different GPS receivers that 
were used inside.



Robert Benward wrote:

Hi Rex,
One more question:  I understand some of the Z3801A were equipped with 
the Furuno 16ch GPS. Do you know the model of this GPS, or was it only 
for the Z3805A or the Z3816A?


Thanks,
Bob


- Original Message - From: "Rex" 
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" 


Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:28 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Motorola GPS Z3801A



Robert Benward wrote:

Hi,
Does anyone have the pinouts for the Motorola GPS within the 
Z3801A?  It's a ten pin header and I would like to intercept the 
data stream to see if it's working.  Also, I read about some of the 
Motorolas putting out binary data, not NEMA protocol.


Thanks,
Bob

The Oncore interface diagram on Didier's page should be enough to see 
which pins are which:

http://www.ko4bb.com/cgi-bin/manuals.pl?dir=05%29_GPS_Timing

For the details, here's a link to a nice clean Oncore manual:
http://gpsd.berlios.de/vendor-docs/motorola/

Chapter 6 of that manual is a description of the Oncore commands that 
are used by these receivers. Yes, it is a mixture of ASCII commands 
with binary data.


I forget which receiver(s) the Z3801A used. My Z3816a has a UT+ but 
it is a little more recent than the 3801's. Someone here, no doubt, 
remembers.


A few years back there were a bunch of posts to this list with 
reference documents for the various Oncores that HP or Symmetricom 
used in the timing receivers. Lots of detail of firmware versions and 
differences between the Oncore receivers. I don't have a link now. 
Maybe others do.





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Re: [time-nuts] Z3816a

2010-06-04 Thread Rex

Robert Benward wrote:

Hi All,
Is there any downside to a model Z3816A?  I also see a Z3815A on Ebay, but 
the connector arrangement is not attractive.  Does anyone have a link to a 
comparison chart between all these models? 

  


I don't have any experience with the 3815, but I have had a Z3816A for 
several years and like it. The multiple outputs were one thing I liked 
about it.


I also modified mine to convert the 4 -- 19.6608 MHz outputs into 10 MHz 
TTL square outputs. So now mine has 2- 10 MHz sine, 4- 10 MHz square, 
and 4- 1 PPS outputs.


Description of the conversion can be found here:
http://www.xertech.net/Projects/Z3816/3816_mod.html



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Re: [time-nuts] Handy iPhone app

2010-07-16 Thread Rex
I'm in San Jose. (Same Bay you are talking about?) I am on AT&T but I 
have a Motoroloa Razr that's at least a couple years old.


I just checked the phone's displayed time vs the internet and also my 
GPS receiver. I just eyeballed the minute turn-over but it was clearly 
within about a second. Good enough for me on my phone. So, at least here 
where I am, AT&T time is not off by even a couple seconds. Maybe the 
issue is another iPhone problem. Do you have any friends on AT&T with 
Motorola phones you can compare?


-Rex


Peter Monta wrote:

Here in the Bay Area, AT&T/iPhone time has gotten noticeably worse
recently.  The error used to be around 4 seconds; now it's 49 seconds (!).

Emerald Time is fine for interactive use, but what I find very impolite
is that AT&T's bad timestamps are written into the EXIF headers on photos.
Sometimes I take pictures of sundials, for example, and a 49-second
error is not negligible for a carefully made dial.

It would be amusing to arrange for a long-term record of the offset of
one's phone (which can of course change across multiple providers during
travel), say by using a background process to take a sample every few hours
against NTP sources or against GPS if the phone has it (or both).
Then any photos can be batch-corrected later if desired.  Apple, give
me control over the time on my own phone, and please don't force me to
resort to these schemes :-).

Cheers,
Peter Monta

  



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Re: [time-nuts] Handy iPhone app

2010-07-17 Thread Rex

Thomas A. Frank wrote:


On Jul 16, 2010, at 4:08 AM, Peter Monta wrote:


Rex  wrote:


I just eyeballed the minute turn-over but it was clearly within
about a second.


Well, apparently it is a phone issue and not a cell-tower issue.
Searching the support forums yields the following trick:  disable
the automatic time setting, set it manually to a grossly wrong
time, then put it back to the automatic setting, causing it to
reacquire the time.  Now my phone is within 3 seconds of NTP.


Didn't fix the problem here in RI.

Same 15 second error after the fact...

Oh well.  I don't really use it as a clock anyway...

Tom Frank, KA2CDK


Curious if you have any comparison you can make with a non-Apple phone?

Seems to me that the problem points there, but we need some non-iPhone 
comparisons in the far (timing-wise) locales to see if there is a clear 
pattern.


Also, I don't have an iPhone. Is there any other way than this Emerald 
thing to measure the clock?




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Re: [time-nuts] HP 5335A Option 040

2010-07-28 Thread Rex

 From a 1993 HP Catalog:

HP5335A Option 40
Expanded HP-IB Control

Adds remote selection of low-pass filter, ac/dc coupling, attenuator, dc 
triggering level, and input impedance for Channels A and B.



On 7/28/2010 7:24 PM, Gordon Batey wrote:

Greetings to the timekeepers.  I have enjoyed many of the comments on this
list over the past few years.

I have a HP 5335A counter with Option 040.  I have found info on options 10,
20 and 30.  Can anyone on the list provide any info on option 040?

Thanks in advance.

Gordon
gpba...@compuserve.com


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Re: [time-nuts] HP 5335A and HP-IB (GP-IB)

2010-08-01 Thread Rex
 I have a couple notebooks with PCMCIA (AKA PC Card) slots. A few years 
back I got an NI card on eBay. Probably harder to find than a PCI card 
and possibly more expensive, but it is one more option that should be 
compatible with all the software. Doesn't need a full sized PC too.


It is one more option that wasn't mentioned, but slots are harder to 
find on newer notebooks.



On 8/1/2010 5:55 PM, Robert Darlington wrote:

I have the Ethernet version.  They're nice for quick and dirty stuff and the
USB / Ethernet versions can be used on laptops (Ethernet can be used on any
computer that can telnet across the wire).  You get to write your own
software to use them or use EZGPIB (and write your own software).

Using a "real" NI GPIB interface means it works with everything out there,
including EZGPIB but you're greatly limited on hardware platforms.  You're
stuck using a computer with a PCI bus unless you want to fork over the cash
for the NI USB or Ethernet interfaces for lots of money.   I tend to use my
PCI-GPIB card and it was under $100 delivered from eBay.

-Bob

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Heathkid  wrote:


I just purchased a HP 5335A and would like to know the group's opinion on
the following:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=549

73 Brice KA8MAV




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Re: [time-nuts] HP 5335A and HP-IB (GP-IB)

2010-08-02 Thread Rex

 On 8/1/2010 11:08 PM, John Miles wrote:


If you live in the US, you might consider writing to your legislators to try
to educate them on the economic effects of software patents.  You can also
contribute your thoughts on post-'Bilski' patentability to the USPTO here:
http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2010/10_35.jsp .

-- john, KE5FX



Sorry, John, I am not aware of  '/Bilski v. Kappos' /decision.  Care to 
share a few words or a concise link on what it is about?


The Supreme Court seems, lately, to be doing as much to destroy America 
as the Banksters.



/
/
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Re: [time-nuts] HP 5335A and HP-IB (GP-IB)

2010-08-02 Thread Rex

 On 8/2/2010 1:55 AM, David C. Partridge wrote:

At long last, an outbreak of sanity in an insane world.

Regards,
David Partridge



I agree. For some reason I had the impression that the ruling had gone 
more the other way.



-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf 
Of Poul-Henning Kamp
Sent: 02 August 2010 09:40
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP 5335A and HP-IB (GP-IB)
Pretty fast after the Bilski ruling, the patent appeals board took a HP software patent 
which was in front of them on "prior arts"
grounds, turned it around send it back down with "according to SCOTUS this stuff 
cannot be patented in the first place".

(http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/proudler.pdf)






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Re: [time-nuts] 74AC175PC

2010-08-02 Thread Rex

 On 8/2/2010 8:58 AM, Mike Feher wrote:

Stanley -

I know this has been a long thread, but, either I missed the beginning or
forgot. What is it that the board you are selling actually does? Thanks -
Mike

Mike B. Feher, N4FS
89 Arnold Blvd.
Howell, NJ, 07731
732-886-5960



http://www.ko4bb.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=precision_timing:pictic



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Re: [time-nuts] was 10MHz LTE-Lite (Phase Matrix)

2014-11-20 Thread Rex
I had not realized that EIP continued to live on in a different form. 
Counters even kept the same name on the front panel.


http://www.phasematrix.net/phasematrix/company/about-us


On 11/20/2014 2:40 PM, Alex Pummer wrote:

they are affordable and good:


   585C/588C Frequency Counters

CW, pulsed, and other time-varying microwave and millimeter-wave 
signals can be automatically measured by the 585C and 588C frequency 
counters. VCO measurements, chirped radar profiling, and 
frequency-agile system analysis are all made with unparalleled ease. 
Pulsed signals can be fully characterized, including carrier 
frequency, frequency linearity, pulse width, and pulse period. The 
585C measures signals up to 20 GHz and the 588C's range reaches 26.5 
GHz with an option to extend to 170 GHz.


- See more at: 
http://www.phasematrix.net/phasematrix/products/frequency-counters/585c588c-full-rack-frequency-counters#sthash.x7L7VuWM.dpuf 




   585C/588C Frequency Counters

CW, pulsed, and other time-varying microwave and millimeter-wave 
signals can be automatically measured by the 585C and 588C frequency 
counters. VCO measurements, chirped radar profiling, and 
frequency-agile system analysis are all made with unparalleled ease. 
Pulsed signals can be fully characterized, including carrier 
frequency, frequency linearity, pulse width, and pulse period. The 
585C measures signals up to 20 GHz and the 588C's range reaches 26.5 
GHz with an option to extend to 170 GHz.


- See more at: 
http://www.phasematrix.net/phasematrix/products/frequency-counters/585c588c-full-rack-frequency-counters#sthash.x7L7VuWM.dpuf
http://www.phasematrix.net/phasematrix/products/frequency-counters/585c588c-full-rack-frequency-counters 


73
Alex
CW, pulsed, and other time-varying microwave and millimeter-wave 
signals can be automatically measured by the 585C and 588C frequency 
counters. VCO measurements, chirped radar profiling, and 
frequency-agile system analysis are all made with unparalleled ease. 
Pulsed signals can be fully characterized, including carrier 
frequency, frequency linearity, pulse width, and pulse period. The 
585C measures signals up to 20 GHz and the 588C's range reaches 26.5 
GHz with an option to extend to 170 GHz. - See more at: 
http://www.phasematrix.net/phasematrix/products/frequency-counters/585c588c-full-rack-frequency-counters#sthash.x7L7VuWM.dpuf


On 11/20/2014 1:40 PM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote:

Said,
For a general purpose lab source, to feed things like

* 22 GHz spectrum analyzer
* 4.5 and 20 GHz signal generators
* 3 and 20 GHz VNAs
* 20 or 40 GHz frequency counter (I'm just looking to buy one)




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Re: [time-nuts] New Years Eve TV countdown

2015-01-01 Thread Rex
TV doesn't seem to care about time sync much these days. It also depends 
a lot on the path getting to you,


I get most of my TV via satellite (Dish network). The receiver I have 
also can get OTA. I have happened to notice, once, that I had a local 
channel on two TVs. One was receiving the local via satellite and one 
was tuned to OTA local broadcast. The satellite was many seconds (at 
least 5, probably more) behind the OTA. I walked from one room to the 
other and had a brief period of deja vu. Hmm, just occurred to me, an 
earphone on the early one while watching the later one with friends 
would make you a living room Jeopardy game show super star.


But that satellite delay all makes sense.

One thing annoys me though. Many channels don't care much about start 
and stop times. If I program something to record using the schedule, 
often I miss the end of it. They frequently go over the half-hour or 
hour mark by a minute or two. Occasionally they complicate it more by 
starting a show a little early too. That irks me.


But for New Years, I didn't try to measure anything exactly, but I know 
they were off by about 3 hrs. I live in California. I was watching New 
York's events on my TV and the ball dropped at about midnight local 
time. I am enough of a time nut to know that should have happened at 9 
PM local time.


See, you just can't trust the media for accuracy these days.


On 12/31/2014 11:23 PM, David J Taylor wrote:

The local ABC network affiliate WJLA in Washington DC was approximately 4
seconds behind WWV in their on-screen countdown clock for New Year's 
eve. The
local NBC affiliate's clock was about 8 seconds late when I checked 
them at

two minutes before midnight. Happy New Year!

Dan Schultz N8FGV


Dan,

I think you just illustrated the delays in digital TV transmission.  
When watching events from abroad (e.g. F1 races) where precise timing 
is available, I typically see a delay of 7-8-9-10 seconds, depending 
on the location.  That is likely a delay to the studio, and then delay 
through Sky satellite TV.  The BBC here no longer shows a clock, 
perhaps partially for that reason.


At least there was no leap -second to confuse things!

Happy New Year!

73,
David GM8ARV


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Re: [time-nuts] HP 58503A Com 4 conflict

2015-01-05 Thread Rex
You left out a lot of details, like what OS your PC is running, Assuming 
it is Windows XP or greater, you may be able to juggle the assigned com 
port.


If you are using a USB/serial adapter, be sure it is plugged in so it 
shows on the devices list.


You need to open Device Manager. One way is Start/settings/Control 
Panel. If it is Win 7+ Device Manager should be in the list. If XP, 
select System, the Hardware tab at the top, then the Device Manager 
button. -- I don't have a Win 8 machine; I assume it is the same as Win 7.


Find your serial device under 'Ports (Com & LPT)'. If you are not sure 
which one and it is a USB adapter, you can unplug it and see which one 
goes away.
Double-click on the one you want to change. In the window that opens, 
select the Port Settings tab at the top.  You'll get a window with the 
baud rate, etc. Select the Advanced button. Then in the lower left of 
the window is the assigned Com Port. Click the pull-down triangle button 
and you'll get a list where you can select a different Com Port number. 
If all the ones you want are flagged with (In use), you may have to back 
out and try to find a listing for the device that is using a low Com 
port and select it to change its number higher to free the one you want 
to use. I'm not sure what happens if you try to change to a port that is 
(In use). Maybe it tries to work it out for you. I haven't tried it.


I'd suggest Com 4 or Com 2 as your best choices.

So I don't have an exact answer. It depends on what is using the lower 
numbers now, Hopefully you can rearrange them using this method to find 
something that works.




On 1/4/2015 7:50 AM, James Robbins wrote:

My new old HP58503A wants to connect to my PC on Com 1-4.  Other PC devices are 
already using those 4 Com ports.

Is there any way to connect it to a Com port other than one of those 1 to 4?

I currently use an Edgeport USB-to-Serial Converter which works very well to 
communicate with the PC and to assign Com ports to my various GPS units.  But, 
as far as I know, the chosen Edgeport Com port must fall within the range of 
Com ports which for which the device is designed.

If this has been answered, please point me to the discussion.  Many thanks.  
And, Happy New Year to all, with wishes for a more peaceful (and timely - 
couldn't resist) year.

Jim Robbins
N1JR
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[time-nuts] Centennial Pi Day

2015-03-13 Thread Rex

This is somewhat time related, so...

Tomorrow is a centennial Pi Day, since the year is 15. Major local 
observation times are just before 9:27 AM or PM.


3-14-15 9:26:54 or for time-nuts 9:26:53.589793... (take it as far as 
you like)


Here's one Pi Day web page,
http://www.chiff.com/home_life/holiday/pi-day.htm

There's also a Wiki page with history, and a search on Pi Day will find 
many more.


Note to Europeans, etc. You have to accept the US-style date format 
(m/dd/yy) or this doesn't work.


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Re: [time-nuts] Motorola Oncore UT+ firmware upgrade & backup power questions

2015-03-13 Thread Rex
On UT+ firmware update. I don't think it is possible to update the 
firmware in a UT+.


Back in 2006, time-nuts had a member, Randy Warner, who worked at 
Synergy. In the message linked here

http://www.mail-archive.com/time-nuts%40febo.com/msg02684.html

He describes the firmware update as a factory-only process that could be 
done then for $25. Now I doubt there is any way to get it done. I have 
never heard of any way to accomplish it without unobtanium factory tools 
and images.


If you search in that mail-archive time-nuts section (linked above), for 
the subject "Oncore GPS models", you may find some more information.



On 3/13/2015 1:33 PM, Pete Stephenson wrote:

Hi all,

After a few years of using a Garmin GPS 18x LVC for timekeeping, my
budget now allows for some upgrades and I had a small field day on eBay:
I acquired a Trimble Thunderbolt, two Trimble Resolution Ts, and two
Motorola Oncore UT+s (seconds purchased for spares and testing).

The documentation for the Trimbles is clear, but I had several questions
regarding the Oncores that I was unable to find clear answers to online.
I would be very much obliged if the folks here might be able to help.

1. Is it possible to upgrade the firmware on the Oncore UT+? If so,
where can one acquire the latest firmware (3.2, I believe) files and how
would go one about installing it? Is this something WinOncore can do? I
ask because the receivers on eBay are of varying vintage and may not be
fully upgraded.

Since Motorola exited the GPS business a relatively long time ago,
firmware updates and directions have proven difficult (impossible so
far) for me to find.




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Re: [time-nuts] modification Lucent RFTG

2015-12-13 Thread Rex

Joerg,

This looks like a very useful mod on a unit that many of us have. I'm 
not aware of any schematics available for these, so I guess you have 
reverse-engineered the "black"  part of the schematic that you provided. 
-- Nice work!


Having said that, may I offer some minor criticism (constructive and 
positive, I hope) of your document?


The schematic you provided shows the key transistors as Q1 and Q2. In 
the text you refer to Q208 and Q209 (which I think are marked on the 
board). From the description, I think Q1 = Q208 and Q2 = Q209. It would 
be nice if the schematic had the Q-numbers changed, or at least, you 
mentioned the equivalence in your text.


(Trivial) Aren't you using an existing SMA connector for your output? 
So, maybe it should be black in the schematic.


Your picture of the board rework is pretty low resolution; even zooming 
into it just gives bigger blurry image. You have added some annotations 
but they are in red over the green board color. Combined with the low 
resolution they are very hard to read. I'm pretty sure they remain in 
German in the English version too.


My suggestions:
- Edit the schematic to change the Q-numbers to match the board and 
text, or at least give the equivalence in the text.
- Use a higher resolution picture and make the annotations more 
readable with different color or background shading.
- The picture you provide is "after". It would be nice to also have 
"before". If you don't have a before picture, I or some other member 
could probably take one.
- Consider having picture annotations in English for the English 
version.


I think what you have done is great. I just think the sharing document 
could be improved to make it easier for others to duplicate.


If you like, I could possibly help make a more readable annotated 
picture if you can provide me a higher res picture of the board. Just an 
offer to help if you would consider my suggestions. I think you will see 
my email in my post.


-Rex   KK6MK



On 12/12/2015 4:39 PM, Jörg Logemann wrote:

Hi,
I worked out a modification of the Lucent GPSDO to get 10MHz out of it
which I offer to the community. The article is available in english and
german (attached).

best 73
Joerg, DL2NI




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Re: [time-nuts] modification Lucent RFTG

2015-12-14 Thread Rex

Joerg,

It all looks good to me. I didn't notice any problems at all with the 
English text. Much easier to follow with the improved pictures.


I notice that the annotations on the picture for the German version are 
the same as the English version now. Very little that would change 
("move" and "pad"?) and probably easy to figure out, so probably fine as 
it is. Just thought I would mention it.


Thanks for sharing your Mods. Nicely done. Should be helpful.

-Rex


On 12/13/2015 1:59 PM, Jörg Logemann wrote:

Rex,
I made some modifications to my article and I hope, that everything is
ok now. Please feel free to correct the text if you find some spelling
mistakes (very likely) because my english is not perfect, hi.
Thanks for your help,
best 73s
Joerg, DL2NI


Am 13.12.2015 um 12:00 schrieb Rex:

Joerg,

This looks like a very useful mod on a unit that many of us have. I'm
not aware of any schematics available for these, so I guess you have
reverse-engineered the "black"  part of the schematic that you
provided. -- Nice work!

Having said that, may I offer some minor criticism (constructive and
positive, I hope) of your document?

The schematic you provided shows the key transistors as Q1 and Q2. In
the text you refer to Q208 and Q209 (which I think are marked on the
board). From the description, I think Q1 = Q208 and Q2 = Q209. It
would be nice if the schematic had the Q-numbers changed, or at least,
you mentioned the equivalence in your text.

(Trivial) Aren't you using an existing SMA connector for your output?
So, maybe it should be black in the schematic.

Your picture of the board rework is pretty low resolution; even
zooming into it just gives bigger blurry image. You have added some
annotations but they are in red over the green board color. Combined
with the low resolution they are very hard to read. I'm pretty sure
they remain in German in the English version too.

My suggestions:
 - Edit the schematic to change the Q-numbers to match the board
and text, or at least give the equivalence in the text.
 - Use a higher resolution picture and make the annotations more
readable with different color or background shading.
 - The picture you provide is "after". It would be nice to also
have "before". If you don't have a before picture, I or some other
member could probably take one.
 - Consider having picture annotations in English for the English
version.

I think what you have done is great. I just think the sharing document
could be improved to make it easier for others to duplicate.

If you like, I could possibly help make a more readable annotated
picture if you can provide me a higher res picture of the board. Just
an offer to help if you would consider my suggestions. I think you
will see my email in my post.

-Rex   KK6MK



On 12/12/2015 4:39 PM, Jörg Logemann wrote:

Hi,
I worked out a modification of the Lucent GPSDO to get 10MHz out of it
which I offer to the community. The article is available in english and
german (attached).

best 73
Joerg, DL2NI



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Re: [time-nuts] MTI 260-0624-D OCXO

2016-02-20 Thread Rex
About opening cases, I opened one, repaired the oscillator and sealed it 
back up (sort of).


In the early 2000's I had a 10 MHz OCXO that I used as the main 
reference for my 10 GHz ham rover rig. It was really doing the job for 
me until I accidentally hooked it up to DC power backwards and killed 
it. I was hoping I could find some way to fix it. The oscillator was one 
of the larger metal packages about 3" long by about 2" square. Here's 
how I opened it.


Earlier I had tried to unsolder a smaller oscillator (about the size of 
the MTI 260) with a torch. It's hard to heat the two sections fast with 
a torch to melt the solder and find a way to grab them both ad pull 
apart while the solder is melted. On that attempt, I eventually got it 
apart but desoldered some internal circuit board components in the process.


For this other broken oscillator that I liked, I decided it might be 
better to mechanically cut it apart. I assumed that the bottom piece 
probably had a lip about 1/4 to 3/8 " long that fit tightly inside of 
the top case and that lip was soldered to join the two pieces. I wanted 
to cut off the top case right where the solder joint ended. I first 
drilled a small test hole into the side of the outer case about where I 
guessed the solder joint ended inside, Ideally just through the outer 
case. Then with a small Dremel bit I enlarged this hole to to figure out 
exactly where the solder seam ended. Then I carefully cut the main case 
around the end of the solder joint. Ideally I cut just a little below 
the end of the inner lip to keep a slight aligning surface for putting 
it back together later.


For the cutting, I had a milling machine that I used, But once you know 
where you want to cut, I think careful hack sawing or a Dremel ceramic 
disk could have done the job. With only a little bit of solder now 
holding the cut top case on, a little prying removed it.


[Another option might be to cut vertical slits in the outer case just 
either side of the round corners (8 cuts) and just as long as the 
internal soldered flange. The object is to turn the bottom sides of the 
outer case into tabs that can be bent out. Driving a knife or chisel 
into the solderd seam will hopefully pry the flaps outward. Getting the 
corners loose would probably be the hard part. Cutting them as in my 
other method might be the easiest. With this method, after opening, I 
think you could then cut or melt of excess solder.off the main case and 
base, straighten the main case sides and get a good strong seam on 
reassembly.]


The blown oscillator I cut open had smt components inside. I replaced 
all the active devices and electrolytic caps I found in the circuit and 
checked to find that it worked again. (Yay!) I then was able to solder 
the top case back on the base. Not quite as strong as the original with 
just a narrow solder bead holding it, but working good as new.


Of course, if the oscillator's metal case is providing a hermetic seal, 
you loose that, but most aren't, anyway.


So I just thought I'd mention this other mechanical attack method. I 
think unsoldering the whole solder seal in one go and pulling it apart 
without damaging the internals is a pretty difficult task.


-Rex


On 2/19/2016 9:09 AM, time...@metachaos.net wrote:

Alex,

I did not take opening pictures, but there is nothing to miss.

For the outside of the unopened case, there are plenty of pictures on eBay.
For the actual opening process, that consisted largely of scraping away solder
with a small, triangular file and utility knife until most of what I could
remove was gone and then using a hammer and screwdriver to separate the sides
from the bottom and then prying it off. Nothing pretty, and nothing much for
pictures. I used a tiny drill for my desoldering gun to remove an intial hole
in the solder for the adjustment hole. I then enlarged it with a 1/16th drill
bit (by hand). Ideally, a 2mm drill bit could be used. A 5/64th drill bit will
fit through the hole, but it is very tight. Probably not best to drill with
it because that would most likely enlarge the hole.

I wouldn't open it the same way again, but I'm not sure of the best procedure
that leaves the case and contents undamaged so that it can be reassembled. I
think, perhaps, that I would remove all of the solder that I could as before.
But then, I would make some sort of cut-out for the pins on the bottom and put
it in a pan on the stove and heat it up (hopefully, evenly) until the bottom
could be popped off. The outside case can get pretty hot without damage
because the only contact is the pins and the inside gets pretty hot when
running. The main risk is getting so hot that the plastic spacers on the pins
melt or the pin supports melt. I'm not sure how hot that would be. But, they
must have heated it fairly hot to melt the solder originally, so hopefully
that would work.

However, here are some pictures o

[time-nuts] Poor termination effects?

2012-11-28 Thread Rex
I live in the San Francisco bay area. You may recall that back in 1989 
we had a big earthquake that did a lot of damage.


The epicenter was near Loma Prieta, which became the name for this 
earthquake. That is about 60 miles south of San Francisco, yet a lot of 
the bad damage occurred there, at the tip of the peninsula. My twisted 
engineer's mind caused me to think that such a locus of damage so far 
from the source may have been due to a poor termination of the peninsula 
into the ocean/bay.




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Re: [time-nuts] Nifty "MINI TIC" for DMTD work please hold off, 4 channel pic...

2012-12-10 Thread Rex

Bert,

I have been waiting for more details to become available. Thanks for the 
update.


Not sure exactly what this means:

but I have to depend on volunteers to do the drawings and they have to make
their time available when convenient.

Depending on if the input is in some kind of standard, or a 
transmittable sketch format, and what the desired output is, maybe I 
could help. Contact me if you think another cook could possibly help the 
broth.


-Rex in San Jose, CA


On 12/9/2012 3:20 AM, ewkeh...@aol.com wrote:

We have a choice of two dual mixers, my copy of the original NBS with minor
  changes and Bill Riley's unit. Comparison tests are ongoing to pick the
best. If  Bill's shows better results I plan on laying one out using leaded
components. 2  channel and 4 channel counters are completed and are being used
for testing.  Corby has done some more tests plotting single channel using
the period mode.  Great results. Can use phase or period.
A documentation package is being prepared to be placed on Didier's site,
but I have to depend on volunteers to do the drawings and they have to make
their time available when convenient.
Juerg is continuing his work on programming a PIC for LCD display but that
will only be an added feature one can use the counters direct with a PC and
as  you may have noticed Corby sold his SR 620.
Bert Kehren



In a message dated 12/8/2012 5:50:35 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
w1...@earthlink.net writes:

What is  the status of this project ? I may have missed a few e-mails.

Thanks,  Dick, W1KSZ




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Re: [time-nuts] EIP545A 18GHz counter query

2012-12-10 Thread Rex
I have an EIP counter with a problem, stashed, that I need to look at 
eventually. So have been following the thread a bit.


If you guys get somewhere conclusive (or not), might be nice to post a 
summary of all important details, techniques, or circuit notes beyond 
the manual, found, to this thread for closing to posterity searchers. 
(And me.)


And, in the mean time, good luck, bon debugging.

-Rex


On 12/9/2012 8:41 AM, paul swed wrote:

Chris
TP4 is not all that helpful its a control signal.
So let me back up for a minute. What are we troubleshooting?
I was thinking band 2 was semi working and you still had a totally dead
band 3.
My comments have been around trying to see what was going on with 3.
Other comment.
I think we should take this offline. Most likely driving time-nuts nuts. :-)
Do you use skype?
Regards
Paul




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Re: [time-nuts] Is now the timepod a symmetricom product ?

2012-12-19 Thread Rex

This is a sign that people can't digest all the messages on time-nuts.

There was this...
http://www.mail-archive.com/time-nuts@febo.com/msg53586.html
(thread replies included John)

and this...
http://www.mail-archive.com/time-nuts@febo.com/msg53811.html


On 12/19/2012 1:29 PM, Didier Juges wrote:

You may have noticed that the miles.io URL now redirects to the Symmetricom
page.

That would be a clue :)

Didier


On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 2:56 AM, Timeok  wrote:


see :  http://www.symmetricom.com/lp/**gbu/email/phase-noise-test-**
probe-landing-page/?emailid=**3120A_Launch_Email_Quote

it seem the same KE5FX  product.


timeok



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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Mayans

2012-12-19 Thread Rex

Ha, ha. That brightened my afternoon.

On 12/19/2012 9:13 AM, J. Forster wrote:

-John

===
[Cartoon]



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Re: [time-nuts] Is now the timepod a symmetricom product ?

2012-12-20 Thread Rex
I didn't really intend my comment as a criticism, more an observation 
about the number of posts to the group making it hard for people to 
follow everything.


I know that I just skim most topics and have recently block-deleted 
multiple messages (unread) in some threads. Took me a while to locate 
those two spots, that I knew I had read, about Symmetricom picking up 
John's product.



On 12/20/2012 3:21 AM, Timeok wrote:

Yes Mr Rex,

I am guilty .. not all people are perfect!

best regards form Timeok


Il 2012-12-19 23:26 Rex ha scritto:

This is a sign that people can't digest all the messages on time-nuts.

There was this...
http://www.mail-archive.com/time-nuts@febo.com/msg53586.html
(thread replies included John)

and this...
http://www.mail-archive.com/time-nuts@febo.com/msg53811.html


On 12/19/2012 1:29 PM, Didier Juges wrote:
You may have noticed that the miles.io URL now redirects to the 
Symmetricom

page.

That would be a clue :)

Didier


On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 2:56 AM, Timeok  wrote:


see :  http://www.symmetricom.com/lp/**gbu/email/phase-noise-test-**

probe-landing-page/?emailid=**3120A_Launch_Email_Quote<http://www.symmetricom.com/lp/gbu/email/phase-noise-test-probe-landing-page/?emailid=3120A_Launch_Email_Quote> 



it seem the same KE5FX  product.


timeok



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Re: [time-nuts] 10 MHz -> 16 MHz clock multiplier

2013-01-03 Thread Rex

On 1/3/2013 6:22 PM, David wrote:

Alternatively if you just want to divide by
5 or some other small fixed number, you can use a couple of flip-flips
and gates.

Flip-flips are good for digitally implementing tick-tick clocks, right? 
:-) (Use flop-flops for tock-tock.)



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Re: [time-nuts] 10 MHz -> 16 MHz clock multiplier

2013-01-05 Thread Rex

On 1/4/2013 4:48 PM, Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

As I recall the spec was:

1) Cheap
2) no phase slips on the 16 MHz relative to 10 MHz
3) Cheap

Bob



GAK!

Here is the original from TVB

What's the simplest way to generate 16 MHz from 10 MHz? This will be for 
clocking a microcontroller at 16 MHz given 10 MHz (Cs/Rb/GPSDO). Low price and 
low parts count is a goal; jitter is not a concern but absolute long-term phase 
coherence is a must.

The ICS525 (as in TAPR Clock-Block) is a good candidate but I was wondering if 
there's something cheaper, less functional, and maybe not SSOP. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
/tvb

This cluster f**k of responses losing track of the original but blathering on 
for days is so typical of the group lately.






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Re: [time-nuts] Interval Timer Recommendation

2013-01-09 Thread Rex

On 1/9/2013 12:48 PM, Azelio Boriani wrote:

and don't forget the PM6681 (50pS)


The PM6681 was sold by Fluke/Philips. The same counter is also 
occasionally seen as the Pendulum CNT-81. Additional good features: 
small, light, and quiet.




On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Magnus Danielson
wrote:
On 01/09/2013 05:39 AM, Ed Palmer wrote:


In the past there has been much discussion on this list regarding the
relative strengths and weaknesses of the 5370 (20ps resolution) and the
5371/5372 (150ps resolution) units. There are other units that have even
better resolution, but they tend to be pricey and/or more specialized.


The 5371/5372 has a 200 ps resolution. They where designed to allow
extension to 100 ps resolution. The FLASH-interpolators have 200 ps steps,
sufficiently good trigger such that you get 150 ps resolution performance
on the white-noise limit.


Cheers,
Magnus




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Re: [time-nuts] Low noise power supplies?

2013-01-31 Thread Rex

On 1/31/2013 12:20 AM, Bruce Griffiths wrote:
With some care its possible to make the emitter current of the shunt 
transistor approximately PTAT so that, at least for small signals the 
temperature dependence of the rejection is reduced significantly.


Sorry, what does PTAT mean? I'm not familiar with that term.



Its also possible to build a feedback style shunt regulator that has 
considerably higher supply rejection than the Wenzel circuit using an 
opamp and a shunt transistor together with a small resistance in 
series with one of the supply leads.


Bruce


The Wenzel article gives three circuit topologies. The third shows an 
opamp feeding a 2N4401 across 0.05 ohm in the power path. Sounds like 
what you are describing. Did you miss that one or are you describing 
something different?


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Re: [time-nuts] FRK-L Rubidium

2013-02-08 Thread Rex

Do you have the service manual? If not, get it here...
http://www.ko4bb.com/manuals/index.php?dir=05%29_GPS_Timing/Efratom

As I recall there's pretty good trouble shooting in the manual. Several 
years ago I fixed an FRK-H that wouldn't lock. The crystal osc had 
drifted enough that the trimmer didn't have enough range to tune to the 
lock freq. Fix was to pull one small cap that was in parallel with the 
trimmer. (C-11 on Osc schematic A21.)


If you have a counter that you trust, it should be easy to see if tuning 
is reasonable. The manual will show where the trimmer is. I think I 
recall looking at the modulation signal as shown in fig 3-2 in the 
manual as I didn't have an accurately calibrated counter at the time. (I 
wasn't able to get to a balanced 2fm output signal until I modified the 
circuit.)




On 2/8/2013 6:50 PM, Garren Davis wrote:

I've let it run for hours and it gets warm. It has a heat sink and it all gets 
warm. There are two adjustment screws. One under the heat sink and one on the 
side of the unit. Is one for the vco and the other for the C-field?



On Feb 8, 2013, at 4:53 PM, "jmfranke"  wrote:


How long do you let it run? Does the crystal oscillator oven get warm? If you 
let it run more than 15 minutes, and the oven gets hot, the next thing to check 
is the output frequency range as the tuning voltage sweeps. Not having a 
frequency counter hurts but there are other methods. One is to use WWV on 10 
MHz. You should hear the output slowly sweep through WWV, first on one side of 
zero beat and then through zero beat to the other side. If the beat stays on 
one side, the VCO needs tweaking to get the sweep somewhat symmetrical about 
the 10 MHz WWV signal.

John  WA4WDL

--
From: "Garren Davis"
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 7:12 PM
To:
Subject: [time-nuts] FRK-L Rubidium


Been lurking on the list for a while and finally started playing with a FRK-L  
rubidium frequency standard. I've had
this thing for a while and decided to power it up and see what it would do. I 
do not get a lock. What I see is the
lamp voltage at 8.54 volts which I think is good but the xtal control voltage 
swings from 2 volts to 15 volts and back
to 2 volts and keeps cycling like that. I don't have a good frequency counter 
but I have a 3 Ghz 40 G/sample scope
and it shows that the 10 MHz signal is there. I just don't know how accurate it 
is. Has anyone seen a problem like
this? Can anyone point me to a place to start debugging this? I have the 
schematics and test tools. I am a test
engineer so I'm not afraid to poke around in the guts of this thing. Hopefully 
I can get this thing running. I also
have a thunderbolt that I'll get running this weekend. I don't know how deep 
I'll get into this time-nuts thing but
I have this nice scope and a Wavecrest sitting in my garage and I'd like to put 
them to use. Any help would be appreciated.

Garren


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Re: [time-nuts] altinex switches

2013-02-12 Thread Rex
Yes, this switch matrix seems intended for video signals, so 75 ohms is 
the expected standard. I doubt that would be much of a problem for 50 
ohm timing signals. Some of us shall see soon. BNCs may be 75 ohm 
versions too, but probably not a big issue.



On 2/11/2013 6:20 PM, J. L. Trantham wrote:

Looks like 75 ohms if I understand the manual correctly.

Joe

-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Don Latham
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 8:00 PM
To: time nuts
Subject: [time-nuts] altinex switches

I bought a couple of
180986059633
switches. The manual is at:
http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/STARINMANUALS/Altinex/Manual/Archive/Home%2
0Run%20(HR)%20Series.pdf

You get 8 inputs switchable to 12 outputs IN ANY COMBO. meaning it can be a
12 output distribution amp. isolation amps all round, and either
200 or 300 MHz bandwidth. dc coupled, have a look. There are some left.
Don



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Re: [time-nuts] Looking for Z3801

2013-02-14 Thread Rex

Here is a Z3816a -- 271152849045
I don't know the seller but has lots of sales.

3816 requires no serial configuration (like 3801) and has two 10 MHz out 
standard. Several years back I came up with a mod to convert the 4 
19...MHz outputs to additional 10 MHz square outputs. -- 
http://www.xertech.net/Projects/Z3816/3816_mod.html


If the picture matches the unit, this one needs +20 to 72 V. I run mine 
on +28V.


3805 is also good (better receiver) but I haven't looked for listings today.



On 2/14/2013 6:14 AM, Greg Broburg wrote:

Hello

I am looking for a working Z3801 for a shop bench reference.

Located in Minneapolis.

I see that there is essentially nothing on eBay.

Considering T-Bolt or Z3805 also.

Greg



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Re: [time-nuts] PTS 3200 remote programming

2013-03-01 Thread Rex
I looked at a copy of the 3200 manual I found a while ago. I used to 
have a bunch of PTS stuff on my web pages but was asked by the company 
to take it down. I think KO4BB manual pages have the same issue. Do you 
have the manual?


It doesn't look like there is anything unexpected in the interface. 
Sounds like something is broken in the path for your 8-weighted bit 
(from pin 42 on the BCD connector according to the manual's table). 
Pete's guidance may be helpful.



On 3/1/2013 10:42 AM, Iban Cardona wrote:

Hi,

I'm traying to use to program the bcd interface of a PTS 3200.

My truble us tha the 100Mhz decade 8 value bit is ignored by the PTS,
then if I send 800Mhz to the PTS dont get output, and if send 900Mhz
then I get 100Mhz.

I checked the unit and the hardware looks OK. And my code is working
well in another PTS units like the 620.

The 3200 have some trick?

Thanks for all

73! Iban
eb3frn
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Re: [time-nuts] PTS 3200 remote programming

2013-03-01 Thread Rex
If you have a pdf manual, you probably have the same one I have. When I 
was looking today, I did see that the input pin numbers listed in the 
table, where it describes the programming (p 29 in the one I have or p32 
of the pdf), does not match SCHEMATIC, PE-1121 (figure 7 or p44 of the 
pdf). I think the schematic is not really for the 3200 as it doesn't 
seem to show any inputs for the two GHz bits.



On 3/1/2013 4:37 PM, Iban Cardona wrote:

Hi Alan,

thanks for answer. Yes I have the manual, but the latches on my pts
not are as are showed in the user manual. Maybe my unit it is a
different version or release, or have some customozation from the pts
guys.

In myunit, I tested the SO-2005 module that is that generates the
100Mhz decade, and I tested manually the 4bit to generate the 800Mhz
and works well.

My unit dont have front panel, only can be controllated remotelly.

The differences from the user manual, is that un the user manual the
1ghz and 100mhz decade shares latch, and in my unit the shares latch
the 100mhz with the 10mhz. The 1ghz latch is shared by the 1hz decade.

Best regards

73! Iban
eb3frn


On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Alan Melia  wrote:

Hi Iban do you have a manual? they are available. From memory because its a
while since I worked on my Wavetek- Rockland unit I believe the remote
programming is in parallel with the front panel switches. The reason for
raising this is that there may be a problem on the back of the panel
switches.mabe a wire off. Does the 800Mhz front panel switch setting
work correctly ??

Alan
G3NYK

- Original Message - From: "Iban Cardona"
To:
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013 6:42 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] PTS 3200 remote programming



Hi,

I'm traying to use to program the bcd interface of a PTS 3200.

My truble us tha the 100Mhz decade 8 value bit is ignored by the PTS,
then if I send 800Mhz to the PTS dont get output, and if send 900Mhz
then I get 100Mhz.

I checked the unit and the hardware looks OK. And my code is working
well in another PTS units like the 620.

The 3200 have some trick?

Thanks for all

73! Iban
eb3frn
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Re: [time-nuts] frequency reference for portable operation

2013-03-10 Thread Rex

I agree with using an OCXO for amateur radio operation.

The main activity in the US is the 10 GHz and Up contest which takes 
place over two weekends, mid-August and mid-September. I've been active 
in most of them for the last 15 years. Full participation requires 
operating something like 12 hrs each of the two weekend days. 
Occasionally I have operated into the wee hours Saturday night. Some 
people go to a high location like a mountain top and stay there all 
weekend. Many rove, driving hundreds of miles, or some combination of 
the two strategies. Very few have AC power available so operate on 
batteries for the two days, though sometimes with the option of charging 
batteries between stops or by just running your engine or a generator. 
By contest rules, to count as a new contact, at least one of the two 
stations needs to move 10 miles or more from a previous location -- 
hence the rover strategy.


To reduce your levels of uncertainty in making contacts, two things 
matter, antenna pointing accuracy and frequency accuracy and stability. 
Being exactly on frequency is nice, but being off a few hundred Hz at 10 
GHz is usually in the radio passband and good enough. So in my 
experience a good OCXO is fine. It is accurate enough, very stable for 
many minutes of contact operation, has good phase noise and moderate 
power consumption. I think most people in the contest are using OCXOs. I 
never checked exact accuracy, but I think, even with a lot of driving 
and temperature extremes my rig stays within a few tens of Hz at 10 GHz. 
A few operators use rubidiums. To my thinking, the extra accuracy is not 
really needed and the extra power consumption is not worth going that 
way if you are running off batteries. Usually, the ones available tend 
to have a bit worse phase noise than a good OCXO too, though I'm not 
sure if enough worse to matter in real contacts.


I have thought about taking a rubidium along to power on occasionally 
and calibrate the OCXO but never found my OCXO frequency to be an issue 
so never bothered to take the rubidium. There are applications like 
microwave EME where very weak signals are extracted by post-processing 
the data of a long contact in the noise level. In that case rubidium 
accuracy is needed for very narrow bandwidth contacts.


You mentioned operating while driving. A few people have the omni 
antennas to do that and I have worked some of them. For that the 
frequency accuracy becomes moot. At freeway speeds the doppler shift at 
10 GHz is very significant in the audio range. Because of that, the 
mobile-while-moving contacts are usually made in FM mode with wide 
bandwidths and no need for very accurate frequency. That mode can't do 
the long distances of dishes and narrow SSB or CW but it has worked 
better than I would have expected. Also, the 10-mile rule tends to make 
the FM mobile less useful and it usually happens as an experiment while 
someone is driving home at the end.


One side note about doppler. Often several guys roam in small packs. To 
begin a contact, often one station will put up a steady carrier for the 
other end stations to find. Often the rovers are set up near a freeway 
and a station receiving near the guy sending steady carrier will hear 
whoops in the steady tone caused by doppler bouncing of the signal off 
the freeway traffic.


In my view, using GPS locked oscillators has the same disadvantage of 
power consumption as the rubidiums. If you are in one location (a 
mountain top, etc.) for long periods of time, it might work, especially 
if you have AC available, but for roving, with the many locations, I 
would think it would either not give you much accuracy or would cause a 
big operational time penalty for multiple surveys. I'm not aware of any 
roving operators around here using GPS (except for location, which 
almost everyone now uses to determine their operating location).


A few operators, get by with an only moderately stabilized frequency. 
This might be a "brick" oscillator with its so-so internal oven. It's 
better to get out than to stay home thinking about better options. The 
poor frequency control is usually on new operator's rigs and was more 
common 10 years back. If the frequency is fairly stable, then the 
drifting can be reined in by going out with other hams who have good 
frequency to calibrate from, or if you have a beacon in range that you 
can find to establish your offset.


So, yes, OCXO is the way most hams lock their mobile microwave rigs.

-Rex, KK6MK


On 3/10/2013 7:23 AM, Jim Lux wrote:

Asking here on behalf of a friend..

With respect to portable amateur microwave operation.. you want good 
close in phase noise (so you can use narrow band filters) AND good 
frequency accuracy (so you can find the signal)>


the typical operation is "drive somewhere, operate a bit, drive 
somewhere operate a bit" repeated (contacts from different grid 
squares

Re: [time-nuts] frequency reference for portable operation

2013-03-11 Thread Rex

On 3/10/2013 6:10 PM, Hal Murray wrote:

r...@sonic.net said:

or if you have a beacon in range that you can find to establish your
offset.

What do you do after you determine the offset?

Do you tweak it out with a trimmer (R or C)?  Or tell the software?  Or do
the corrections with pencil and paper?




The typical rig would use a 2 meter radio as the low end transceiver. 
The microwave radio usually would be set up so that 10368 MHz would tune 
down to 144 MHz on the "IF" radio. So if you tune a beacon that you 
expect to be at 10368.300 and find it at 144.301, you now know your 
radio tunes 1 kHz high so you transmit and listen 1 kHz high vs the 
dial. Or you could go, "1 KHz isn't a lot", so just ignore it and assume 
the other more experienced operators will figure it out. After a couple 
contacts I usually figure out that I should listen for another 
particular station with a certain offset. More complicated, a certain 
station may have an offset of xxx Hz between Tx and Rx. I hate that 
because my IF radio is a pain to tune RIT (receive vs Tx offset) so it 
is hard for me to correct and we wind up chasing each other. up or down 
the band between tx/rx iterations.



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Re: [time-nuts] frequency reference for portable operation

2013-03-11 Thread Rex
I do the stuff on your list that is easy. Controlling the environment -- 
orientation, ambient  temp, etc. -- is not worth the extra effort. Much 
of what I discussed is that perfection isn't necessary.


The quality of the oscillator probably matters a good bit, but recently 
I am learning, don't trust word of mouth or "specifications". Over the 
last few years I have accumulated many "decent" OCXOs. But  I don't have 
a base standard 10 MHz reference that I consider pristine 
phase-noise-wise and until recently had no way that I trusted to make 
any kind of phase noise measurements. Recently I got into a project 
where I built a board that uses a LMX2541 chip to make 3600 MHz using a 
10 MHz reference with a pretty wide loop bandwidth. The board multiplies 
the 10 MHz reference up to a point where a good SA can see the phase 
noise. Measuring that on my 8566 SA with John Miles software, I learned 
a couple things.


First - My measurement setup doesn't give real accurate phase noise 
measurements compared to passing my DUT and sources on to someone with 
real quality instrumentation.


Second - Comparing my measurements to the very good equipment, it is 
clear that my measurements give a close approximation to the good one's, 
only not exact across 10 Hz to 10 KHz. But my measurements are good for 
a qualitative feel within, say 5 dB, and certainly good for relative 
comparison of the contribution from different 10 MHz reference sources.


So, I have bought a lot of 10 MHz OCXOs from eBay over the last few 
years. The best phase noise baseline reference I have found so far is my 
Z3805. I have lots of OCXOs in the 2x2x1.5 inch size. Many had good 
specs pointed at by the listings or word of mouth. When I used them with 
my board and SA most were pretty crappy compared to the Z3805. A couple 
of the ones I bought were Morion MV89As. - supposedly good, but what I 
saw didn't look very great. One of the best ones I have is a small 
2x2x.75 inch Wenzel I bought a few years back. It has a custom part 
number of 500-11935. But don't buy by name. I recently picked up a 1x1x3 
Wenzel 10 MHz with sma output connector and its phase noise looks pretty 
horrible.


Some old Isotemps were decent, but not as good as the Z3805 and I 
haven't measured some 10811s and 10554s I have in the back of my box 
because they are harder to feed DC-wise.


My point is, I collected a lot of OCXOs that are not nearly as good as I 
thought they would be. But all would probably make reasonable references 
for frequency stability. Not sure if the level of not-great phase noise 
from many of them would be noticeable if they were used to lock a good 
10 GHz radio. If I was younger, I'd probably go for that experiment. -- 
In reality, don't know if I ever will.


-Rex



On 3/10/2013 5:15 PM, Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

If you go with one of the better DOCXO's on eBay (spend the full $30 not $15) you 
should get something that will hold < 0.3  ppb for 48 hours. You would have to 
do a few things:

1) Keep it on power for a couple weeks ahead of time.
2) Keep it on power the whole weekend.
3) Make sure it's always in the same orientation (base down or whatever)
4) Put it in something like a cooler to keep the drafts off of it
5) Regulate the supply and efc tightly.

You might have to buy three and sort them, but I suspect not.

One ppb at 10 GHz would be 10 Hz. The carefully minded DOCXO should keep you 
within 3 Hz.

Bob
  
On Mar 10, 2013, at 6:24 PM, Rex  wrote:



I agree with using an OCXO for amateur radio operation.

The main activity in the US is the 10 GHz and Up contest which takes place over 
two weekends, mid-August and mid-September. I've been active in most of them 
for the last 15 years. Full participation requires operating something like 12 
hrs each of the two weekend days. Occasionally I have operated into the wee 
hours Saturday night. Some people go to a high location like a mountain top and 
stay there all weekend. Many rove, driving hundreds of miles, or some 
combination of the two strategies. Very few have AC power available so operate 
on batteries for the two days, though sometimes with the option of charging 
batteries between stops or by just running your engine or a generator. By 
contest rules, to count as a new contact, at least one of the two stations 
needs to move 10 miles or more from a previous location -- hence the rover 
strategy.

To reduce your levels of uncertainty in making contacts, two things matter, 
antenna pointing accuracy and frequency accuracy and stability. Being exactly 
on frequency is nice, but being off a few hundred Hz at 10 GHz is usually in 
the radio passband and good enough. So in my experience a good OCXO is fine. It 
is accurate enough, very stable for many minutes of contact operation, has good 
phase noise and moderate power consumption. I think most people in the contest 
are using OCXOs. 

Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather numbers

2013-03-12 Thread Rex
Do you think that the oven is working correctly? Is the DC current high 
on power-up then dropping to a steady lower value after warm-up time?


My concern is that the resistors may have unsoldered themselves because 
the oven ran away into an over-temp condition.



On 3/12/2013 9:55 AM, Garren Davis wrote:

Bob,

Took your advice and ordered another OCXO. While waiting for it I decided to 
cut open the
OCXO with a bad heater that came with the thunderbolt. I found the 1 ohm 
resistor from the
12 volt pin to the heater circuit popped off its solder pads and was laying 
between the
insulation and the metal enclosure. While unsoldering the circuit board to fix 
this the
1 ohm resistor in the oscillator circuit popped off its solder pads. For others 
that have
OCXO's that don't work this is an easy fix. They are large surface mount 
resistors and easy
to solder. Anyways I put the circuit board back in the metal enclosure but did 
not seal
it. I put the OCXO back in my double oven and started a run. The enclosed 
picture is a 72
hour display. Even though the DAC was still increasing it looked like the PPS 
had stabilized
so I did an auto calibrate. You can see this at marker 1. That was almost two 
days ago.

Questions:
1. Is it normal to take this long for the PPS to stabilize?
2. Is it normal for the DAC to keep increasing after two days?
3. In general what numbers would be considered good for the PPS and OSC?

Thanks.

Garren





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Re: [time-nuts] Win XP and NIST time

2013-03-23 Thread Rex
I'm running Microsoft Windows XP Professional -- Version 5.1.2600 
Service Pack 3 Build 2600.


I still get occasional notifications and update my OS with latest 
changes. (Don't know how much longer that will continue.) The time on my 
system updated OK and is currently correct. I haven't noticed any issues 
with the DST changeover. I just asked it to do a time synchronization 
and that completed OK.


So rumors of XP being broken seem to be exaggerated.



On 3/23/2013 5:06 PM, J. Forster wrote:

If you double left click on the clock; click on the Time Zone tab, there
is a check box for DST update on/off. Since the dates of DST have changed,
it does not work right.

Best,

-John

=



Hi all,

I am a new member, in St Pete, Florida. I noticed that last week, my XP
laptop had not updated at the arrival of summer time and I had to do it
manually.

Cheers.

Jay
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Re: [time-nuts] Are there any rubidiums programmahttps://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inboxble to 40 MHz?

2013-03-25 Thread Rex
Please tell us if I am parsing the content of your message correctly 
with my inserted comments.


On 3/25/2013 9:09 AM, Stan, W1LE wrote:

Hello Dave,

The problem I experienced with a Rb at 10 MHz stabilizing a AD6IW PLL 
at 106.5 MHz

for a DB6NT 10 GHz G2 transverter,
I assume by "stabilizing" you mean that the rubidium was providing the 
reference frequency to the PLL.



was the significant microphonics after multiplication.
The original xtal oscillator did not have microphonics, but would drift.

My solution was to add a ISO-Temp 10 MHz OCXO as  a reference to the PLL.
By "add" I think you mean replace, as in, the rubidium is no longer used 
but the OCXO has replaced it as the PLL's reference. If you really meant 
add, that would imply that somehow the rubidium is disciplining the 10 
MHz OCXO.



This provided me with the frequency accuracy and stability
needed for a weekend of microwave contesting, USB/CW

My 10 GHz operation is portable and I rove.

Stan, W1LECape Cod   FN41sr



On 3/25/2013 10:17 AM, David Kirkby wrote:

I'm possibly looking for a 40 MHz source and I know some of the
rubidiums are programmable. But can any of the affordable ones be
programmed to work at 40.0 MHz?

I was looking for a source to drive this 144 MHz -> 10 GHz transceiver.

http://www.chris-bartram.co.uk/products.html

The TCXO oscillator is off the board and a separate item, but costs
£40 and then one ideally wants to lock that to a more precise source.
The oscillator will lock to an external 10 MHz source, but then one
needs to buy both a 10 MHz rubidium as well as this 40 MHz TCXO. Hence
I was wondering if there was a cheaper more compact solution, which
just used a rubidium, and dispensed with a TCXO.

Dave


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Re: [time-nuts] Time nut newbie

2013-04-30 Thread Rex
It doesn't affect the general magnitude conclusions by Bruce, but as 
long as we are making corrections, my calculator seems to think
60 * 60 * 24 * 12 = 1036800 seconds in 12 days, not 1024800.  That does 
come out to 115.7 days for 1 sec error. Maybe the 12-day number was a typo?


-Rex


On 4/30/2013 12:57 PM, Bruce Griffiths wrote:
12 days is 1024800 s ie just over 1 million seconds so a frequency 
offset of 0.1ppm results in a time error of ~ 0.1s not 1s.

1sec error would occur in just under 116 days,

Bruce

Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

If you take a look down in the fine print on the OCXO spec, the aging 
rate

is 100 ppb / year in the first year. If you are off by 0.1 ppm (100 ppb)
your clock will gain a second in less than 12 days.

Bob



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Re: [time-nuts] Precise positions for GPSDOs

2013-05-02 Thread Rex
PHK, the big pdf link in your sneak page is broken (gives 404). Can you 
fix that for us?


P.S., while you are there you could change "goory' to "gory".


On 5/2/2013 5:22 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

In message 
, Stewart 
Cobb writes:


The next best idea is to locate your antenna on Google Maps. [...]

If your GPSDO's self-survey isn't better than the registration of
Google Maps, you have different problems.

In particular, be aware that the GPSDO does not need to know the
antennas _actual_ position, it needs the _apperant_ position, which
takes the reflection environment into account. (GW: "fresnel zone")

This is a much better strategy:

http://phk.freebsd.dk/raga/sneak/




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Re: [time-nuts] Good (cheap) PIC chip choice for project?

2013-05-25 Thread Rex

On 5/25/2013 1:22 PM, Bob Camp wrote:

If you are going to code on a cheap PIC (the PIC16 series) you will likely need 
to learn PIC assembler. All my coding on those parts was in assembly language. 
They are old enough / slow enough / small RAM enough that things like C (or the 
other high level languages you listed) really don't do well on them.


Several years back I did a bunch of stuff with various PIC16 series 
chips. All of it, except for some minor assembler tweaks, was done in C. 
Glad I did not know it wasn't practical. I would have wasted a lot of 
time coding it in assembler. Of course my goal was just getting 
something done, not being elegant or very efficient. Time-nutty stuff 
like TVB's frequency divider may require the detail and efficiency only 
provided by assembler.



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Re: [time-nuts] Spectracom 8170 Time of Day grief...(WWVB Clock)

2013-06-13 Thread Rex

On 6/13/2013 9:02 AM, J. L. Trantham wrote:

However, as a 'modern art' piece, I might have a chance. :^)

Joe




Like this?

http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/images/Bob%20Pease%20Breadboard.jpg

Hmm, maybe not.

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Re: [time-nuts] FEI-5660 Rubidium Oscillator

2014-03-29 Thread Rex

On 3/27/2014 8:47 PM, Mark Sims wrote:

Granite tends to be rather radioactive (particularly avoid the pink stuff).

Apologies before I begin...

He who holds the scintillation detector has a gamma ray-son detre.

Paranoia strikes deep
into your home it will creep
There's a man with a Geiger counter over there
telling me I ought to beware

OK, sorry, crawling back into the stonework.
TIC Tic tic

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Re: [time-nuts] Weather/units question for European members

2014-05-23 Thread Rex
I have a crappy Chinese-made handheld propeller anemometer. I'm not in 
Europe but FWIW the output can be selected as: m/s, km/h, ft/min, knots 
or mph. So, the first  two of those seem to be likely metric choices.


Your method sounds interesting. Would you be willing to share any 
details about how you are using the ultrasonic modules? Do they just 
point out into open space or is there something more involved?  Was 
there a reference that got you started on this idea?




On 5/23/2014 6:16 PM, Mark Sims wrote:

I am building a weather sensor that includes a ultrasonic anemometer to measure 
wind speed, direction, and air temperature.  It uses 4 cheap ($1 each) HC-SR04 
ultrasonic rangefinder modules that output a pulse width proportional to the 
time of flight of the sound signal  (topic is time nut related since  it 
simultaneously measures the speed of sound in 4 directions to a pretty good 
accuracy/resolution using a cheap-ass microprocessor - ATMEGA328 (like and 
Arduino)...  and does so without using any counter-timer channels).
Now the question...  I would like it to be able to output data in imperial or 
metric units.  In what units is the typical wind speed reported  (meters/sec,  
km/hour, ?).   Also air pressure (millibars/hectopascals/pascals/?).
   
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Re: [time-nuts] GPS puck?

2014-06-26 Thread Rex
I just did a little shopping after Tom's recommendation on USGlobalSat 
pucks. Here is a little more detail.


BU-353-S4 is the current USB version
BR-355-S4 is the Serial version

Not as "dirt cheap" as Mark's unit, these close to $40 each, but 
reasonable with enclosures, ready to go. In the US I found Amazon a 
little cheaper than eBay listings.


Serial has a PS-2-style connector but needs an adapter for connection to 
PC. Connector pin-out is here...

http://www.usglobalsat.com/p-689-br-355-s4.aspx#images/product/large/689.jpg

-Rex


On 6/26/2014 1:59 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote:

David,

Also check the web/eBay for: GlobalSat GPS BU353 S4

Dirt cheap, well made, water proof, high performance, NMEA or binary. They come 
in both USB (if you want to use them with a PC or SBC) or RS232/serial (if you 
want to use them with microcontrollers or data loggers or PC or SBC). The 1PPS 
is available at the IC, which you can access by opening the case (screws, not 
glue).

/tvb

- Original Message -
From: "David C. Partridge" 
To: "'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'" 

Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] GPS puck?



Mark,

Thank you that looks ideal, now all I need is a suitable weatherproof cover
and I'm in business.

Regards,
David Partridge


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Re: [time-nuts] GPS puck?

2014-06-26 Thread Rex

On 6/26/2014 10:45 PM, David J Taylor wrote:


Amazon UK want over $200!  A Garmin GPS 18x LVC would be half the 
price..


Cheers,
David


The UK Amazon listings are crazy. There's a listing of the USB version 
at 35 pounds or about $60 (still pretty high) but the only serial 
version listed is 107 pounds or $182.Wow!?


All the US listings I saw had the serial version higher priced than the 
USB (why?) but Amazon prices I found were only a little less than eBay.


Not much logical about the prices, it seems.



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Re: [time-nuts] Introduction and info about a Lucent RFTG

2014-07-04 Thread Rex
Several years ago there were a number of these showing up pretty cheap 
on eBay, so I bought one. As I recall there were a couple of similar 
versions with some differences so take this recollection with a grain of 
salt.


I did some tracing of the internals on the one I had and found the 
rubidium unit had no connection on the tuning pin (C-field) to the board 
circuits. So it was free running, only for backup in the system, and not 
GPS lockable. I don't remember there being any useful power supply in 
the box, so my advice would be to remove the LPRO rubidium and use it 
directly. (It does need heat sinking, so maybe some parts of the box 
mechanicals are useful.) In my opinion, working out how to use the 
supporting circuit board is not worth the effort, unless you really have 
a need for the 15 MHz they create.


You should be able to find documentation for the internal module LPRO 
rubidiums on the web. I haven't looked today but KO4BB site probably has it.



On 7/4/2014 1:47 PM, Denver wrote:

Hi all,

My name is Denver I am currently a freshman in college and the time bug has
struck me. I recently acquired a Lucent RFTG on ebay to have a time
standard for my lab(and yes already realize its 15MHz output but may be
able to change that and or just use the 10MHz test point from the rubidium
source). I made a power connector for it. Now that I have power applied and
sort of verified its operation I am looking for more info about the
connectors on the front panel. I have the KO4BB user documentation on it
but it doesn't mention much about connectors and pinouts. I also have
already searched the group for other mentions of the RFTG but all I am able
to come up with is some of the newer models the -m and such. Maybe one of
you could help point me in the right direction or give me some other ideas
on how to get more use out of this unit.

Thanks in advance
-Denver
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Re: [time-nuts] Synergy-GPS SSR-6tru problems

2014-07-16 Thread Rex
I think your story is rather incomplete. You never (to my deduction) 
told us what you are plugging this into. You mention a GPSDO so I guess 
that is where it is plugged while not doing what you want, but you never 
mention what that GPSDO might be.


You blew off Art Sepin's reply as not relevant. Why? What is the 
communication path to the receiver from whatever you are using to send 
commands? Is it through the GPSDO? If so, it seems to me the 
communication may not be direct and may be filtered by the GPSDO so the 
commands you are sending aren't reaching the new board in the way you 
would like.


I never used one of these new boards you are trying to use, but if you 
want good answers I think you need to tell us exactly what you are 
plugging it into and through what signal path you are issuing the commands.




On 7/15/2014 2:36 PM, Bob Stewart wrote:

I got one of these recently, along with the adapter board.  This is the ublox 
only version, and I am using u-center version 8.11 software.  I am unable to 
make it work properly.  The NMEA section happily sends out messages, but I 
cannot get anything else to work.  e.g. it ignores the commands to turn off 
antenna power.  It ignores the command to put it in Survey-In mode.  Nothing is 
displayed when monitoring the SVIN field.  I sent the board back and received 
one that they have tested there at the site.  Same story.  When I plug my UT+ 
into the same connector in my GSPDO, it works just fine and responds properly 
to commands from WinOncore12.  I have used both a serial port adapter and a 
USB-adapter to drive the TTL lines to the board.


So, there is something wrong at my end, and it's probably something so trivial that 
no-one would think to mention it.  Has anyone tried this board?  Can you think of any 
setting that's "inherently obvious to the most casual observer" that a newbie 
could repeatedly overlook?  For example, is there some first setting that you always do 
in u-center to shut down the NMEA and turn on the UBX, but the setting does not save on 
the board and the u-center software always overrides it?


The configuration is this:  The adapter does the 3V to 5V stuff, and plugs into 
the same connector as my UT+.  The antenna lead is connected to a non-powered 
port on my GPS Source splitter.  The splitter connects to a puck in the attic 
via RG-6.  The SNR of the received signals is in the 20-50 range on the 
u-center display window.  I have tried driving a different puck directly that 
is in my lab room.  No change except for lower SNR values.


Bob - AE6RV
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Re: [time-nuts] Noise and non-linear behaviour of ferrite transformers

2014-07-19 Thread Rex

On 7/19/2014 6:38 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:

Or
another way of putting it is you do a bunch of
measurements and then construct a theory to
explain what you already know experimentally. 


I like that. Or perhaps, stated another way, in the real world engineers 
are just as important as physicists in the theoretical world.


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Re: [time-nuts] LTE-Lite Eval Kit available

2014-09-24 Thread Rex

On 24/09/2014 12:16 PM, Dave Martindale wrote:

Hello.  Please add me to the list of people interested in the LTE-Lite eval
kits.

(I did not send a previous email, and you did not lose it - I've just been
slow in writing).

Thanks,
 Dave

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 8:05 PM, S. Jackson via time-nuts <
time-nuts@febo.com> wrote:


Hello Time-Nuts,

we put together an email list with the large number of email  info-requests
I got for the LTE-Lite eval kits over the weekend.

I have just sent an email to everyone on that email list from my  corporate
email account.

Unfortunately my AOL account has a tendency to "eat" emails, so if you did
not receive the info email from me today and should be on that list then
please drop me a line directly and I will add you to the list immediately.

I apologize in advance in case I did not properly  capture your email,
thanks,
Said
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Re: [time-nuts] HOW WE GOT TO NOW WITH STEVEN JOHNSON | "Time" An Inside Look | PBS

2014-10-25 Thread Rex
It's a series. The first night there were two shows back-to-back and I 
think the 2nd one was the time-related one.


Its vaguely like the old "Connections" PBS series where; this thing  
lead to that thing, which led to...
I was multitasking so might not be the best critic, but I found it very 
grade school level. Most of the interesting stuff was glossed over. I 
was unimpressed enough that I never watched any of the following shows 
after those two.


Maybe others have other opinions.

-Rex


On 10/25/2014 11:51 AM, Brooke Clarke wrote:

Hi:

I don't have TV and wonder if anyone who has PBS can comment on this 
program?

preview at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhDvGhFbpq8



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Re: [time-nuts] Lucent KS-24361, HP/Symmetricom Z3809A, Z3810A, Z3811A, Z3812A GPSDO system

2014-10-31 Thread Rex
Here's another reference on driving 10-ish MHz square wave outputs via 
digital chips.


A few years ago I hacked my HP Z3816 to covert its 4 - 19.6608 MHz 
square wave outputs to be 4 more 10 MHz outputs. In the process I 
reverse engineered some of what was there. I found each of these outputs 
came from one 74ACT040 inverter chip per output connector with several 
gates in parallel through 100 ohm resistors to give low impedance drive. 
Maybe all the parallel gates are overkill for most needs, but anyway, in 
the process I drew a schematic of the arrangement that was found there.


You can find the schematic picture, labeled "One of the 19.6608 MHz 
Outputs", near the middle of this page for the whole hacking project:

http://www.xertech.net/Projects/Z3816/3816_mod.html

Bob, I might add parenthetically, that while your responses always seem 
accurate and informative, many times they are presented in such a 
sketchy bullet-point way that only those who already understand what you 
are describing can accurately follow what you are trying to share. Maybe 
it is just my less-than-expert point of view, but I think a lot of your 
posts would benefit if you could give a bit more detail or maybe a link 
to some kind of example or explanation. I appreciate all you offer, it 
takes time to read and reply, but I think often you are preaching to the 
choir when a little more detail could reach the whole congregation. 
Change or not, please keep posting. Even the cryptic stuff contains 
meaning, perhaps a spur to dig deeper.


Bruce, when posting here, used to baffle me too, but he often shared 
links to papers or schematics to aid in following the details of what he 
was describing.




On 10/31/2014 5:02 PM, Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

A  $0.15 each dual / quad / hex / octal buffer IC’s will get you > 15 dbm per 
pair of gates. For under $10 in active parts you can have 30 or 40 outputs. I 
suspect that if you look inside the 3812 that’s exactly how they are generating 
the 10 MHz you are looking at.

Bob


On Oct 31, 2014, at 7:01 PM, Graham / KE9H  wrote:

Bill:

On cable TV systems, 50 MHz to 500 (or higher) are the forward channel.
(Head-end to client.)
Below 30 MHz is the reverse channel, for data going from the client to the
cable company.
The band 30 to 50 is a cross over zone for the band splitting filters.


It is designed to not amplify the forward direction below 50 MHz.

--- Graham

==

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 4:07 PM, Bill Riches 
wrote:


Hi Bob,

I connected 10 MHZ test jack output to a 15 db el-cheepo CATV amp and the
output of that to a 4 way splitter.  Splitter outputs went to 3336-3586 and
counter.  All seem to like the ref signal.  Output of the amp takes makes
the semi-square wave into a sick saw tooth.  Amp is only rated from 50 to
500 mhz so strange things are happening with 10 MHZ input.  Other CATV amps
do have better low fx response - will play with that later.

I have 10 mhz pulse from Lucent into trigger input of 465 scope and
Thunderbolt gps output into vertical input of scope.  Time base is set for
.01 Usec per div. I notice that trace moves right to left then left to
right about every 5 min or so.  Moves about 3 div before changing
directions.  Why?  Is the Lucent still making a list?  It has only been on
for a few hours.  It takes about 10 min for GPS to go out from a cold
start. (My Thunderbolt and RB do not change direction when using one as
trigger and the other for vert input to scope)

I ordered a USB to RS422 converter cable - will be here next week.  What
program is sort of working?  Using Windoze 7 64bit and have an old XP
machine available.

Sure do appreciate all the info from our time nuts gurus!

73,

Bill, WA2DVU
Cape May, NJ




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Re: [time-nuts] Buffering a PPS signal

2012-05-17 Thread Rex
In line with what Bob suggests, here is one of the square wave outputs 
of an HP Z3816A...


http://www.xertech.net/Projects/Z3816/Output_circ.gif

Or look at the project for context...

http://www.xertech.net/Projects/Z3816/3816_mod.html



On 5/17/2012 6:17 PM, Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

Parallel up as many inverters (or logic buffers) as you feel you need. Much 
less delay than the MOSFET drivers. Small packages for easy layout. Run off of 
5 volts (or what ever…). Put a resistor in series with the output of each of 
them and they will equalize very well.

Bob

On May 17, 2012, at 7:35 PM, Michael Tharp wrote:




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Re: [time-nuts] USGS: GPS for seismic work

2012-05-19 Thread Rex

I was at the USGS open house for a couple hours. My first time to go.

Was also my first time to see a commercial choke ring GPS antenna up 
close. Was interesting to see the antenna shifted a few inches and 
causing a step function on the internet screen where they where 
monitoring it along with a few permanent logging station antennas that 
were (fortunately) stable while we were watching.


Also enjoyed seeing a hand held XRF Spectrometer (Xray Fluorescence) for 
identifying the material in random samples. And good to chat with the 
guy who carried it around Afghanistan for the last few years helping 
(the Afghanies?) learn what neat stuff their country contains. He also 
had an entertaining story about shopping for silver items -- "90% 
silver, sir." He pulls the XRF out of his pack and scans to find more 
like 20% silver.


Quite a few interesting discussions with several people around the 
place. Also bought a nice large wall map of California with nice relief 
view of the mountains for $9.


Well worth the drive from San Jose.



On 5/19/2012 6:09 PM, Hal Murray wrote:

It wasn't hard to find the right people at the Open House.

GPS is interesting for big quakes.

Most seismometers measure acceleration.  It's a double integration to get
displacement which is what they are used to working with.  Big quakes last
longer which leads normal seismometers to get into troubles with drift.  GPS
doesn't have any drift problems.  The cross over is somewhere in the mag 7-8
range.

Japan has a large earthquake warning system.  On the big tsunami of last
year, they weren't looking for long enough.  They estimated 7.9.  In
hindsight, they probably could have gotten better data sooner by using GPS.

This news story says that they can see the disturbance in the ionosphere.
   http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/04/23/f-tsunami-research.html





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Re: [time-nuts] USGS: GPS for seismic work

2012-05-19 Thread Rex

On 5/19/2012 10:22 PM, Hal Murray wrote:

Another gadget that I saw was a "two color" laser ranging setup.  It was good
for 1 mm over 5 km.  (ballpark)

I think I saw that too. Pretty old; mid-80's probably. The number 
switches caught my attention. Made me try to figure out the vintage. My 
guess was late 70's but history indicated maybe a little newer than that.



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Re: [time-nuts] GPS and Rubidium frequency standards and noise question (new...

2012-06-03 Thread Rex

Said,

Thanks for the info and congrats on the stats from the Jackson Labs stuff.

You mentioned the older HP Z3801. I wonder if you (or others) happen to 
have comparison numbers on the Z3816A with the MTI 260 oscillator or the 
Z3805 with (I think) the same oscillator. I thought I heard the MTI 260 
might be slightly better than the 10811 but can't recall if anyone here 
actually made measurements,


Not to say that any of the HP Z stuff is seen for sale often these 
days. But I have one of each of the above mentioned.


Guess it may be close to the *time* where I should take the *time* to 
build or set up a system where I could get trustworthy measurements of 
these *timing* quality things myself. I keep reading but never seem to 
find the time to actually do it.


-Rex


On 6/3/2012 1:46 AM, saidj...@aol.com wrote:

Jerry, Chris,

it's all relative, while the Lpro may be a good Rb standard, it's phase
noise is not that good really. You list:

-96dBc/Hz @ 10Hz, -138dBc/Hz @ 100Hz, -152dBc/Hz @ 1KHz  offsets

For the Lpro. The new Jackson Labs Technologies LN CSAC GPSDO with SC-cut
phase noise and ADEV filter achieves the following:

-138dBc/Hz @ 10Hz, -148dBc/Hz @ 100Hz, -152dBc/Hz @ 1KHz  offsets.

At 1Hz offset we see -105dBc/Hz and better on that unit.

The FEI-5680A Rubidium that we discussed here some time ago has a much
worse phase noise plot of course, because the 10MHz is generated digitally
through a DDS, not a 10MHz crystal oscillator..

It all depends on your requirements, and your budget.. I think the Z3801A
(or it's brother the 58503A) is still one of the lowest phase noise and
best ADEV GPSDO on the surplus market if you get a typical unit, and if you can
  locate one.

bye,
Said

From: Jerry Mulchin<_jmulchin@cox.net_ (mailto:jmulc...@cox.net)>
Date: June 2,  2012 16:44:14 PDT
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency  measurement
<_time-nuts@febo.com_ (mailto:time-nuts@febo.com)>
Subject:  Re: [time-nuts] GPS and Rubidium frequency standards and noise
question  (newbie).
Reply-To: Discussion of precise time and frequency  measurement
<_time-nuts@febo.com_ (mailto:time-nuts@febo.com)>





Chris,

To answer your question  regarding using a Rubidium standard as a frequency
  reference
for your  Transverters.

GPS really has nothing to do  the main requirement regarding Phase Noise
and  your
Transceivers. But the 10MHz oscillator inside the  Rubidium standard is the
item
that will be the Phase Noise  problem if you get the wrong Rubidium
standard. There
are  cheap Rubidiums and there are good Rubidium standards to  consider.

An LPRO-101 is actually a very  good Rubidium standard, and exhibits Phase
Noise
values of  -96dBc/Hz @ 10Hz, -138dBc/Hz @ 100Hz, -152dBc/Hz @ 1KHz  offsets
from carrier. This is what I use for my 10GHz  Transverter reference, but I
don't lock it
to GPS when in  the field. LPRO-101's can be gotten pretty  reasonably.

Locking the LPRO-101 to a GPS  will require more support circuitry, and
most of the
folks  on this list can help you with that.

Also,  Thunderbolt GPS disciplined units are nice, but I do not know the
Phase  Noise
numbers of a typical Thunderbolt unit. Others here  probably know the
answer to that.

The  important thing to remember is you don't what to use 10MHz oscillators
that  have
poor Phase Noise performance as it will effect your  weak signal capability
if you use
a poor Phase Noise  oscillator.

Jerry

At  03:05 PM 6/2/2012, you wrote:

If you want a frequency reference.  There is nothing better than GPS.  In


fact it you bought a Rubidium you would  still need the GPS so you could


calibrate its  frequency.





Some GPSes might be noisy but then you can  lock a good double oven crystal


oscillator to it and have what they call a  "GPS disciplined crystal


oscillator or "GPSDO".











On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Chris Wilson<_chris@chriswilson.tv_
(mailto:ch...@chriswilson.tv)>   wrote:
















I am looking to get a frequency standard  for my amateur radio shack,




initially for verifying test gear  readings, but later as a standard




to lock receiver and transmitter  oscillators to. I was going to buy




a GPS frequency standard but a friend  warned me these may have noise




issues when I come to use it with an  oscillator in RX / TX




applications. It's not something I had  considered, so what's the




score here please? Should I not buy a GPS  standard? Thanks. Any




links to known safe suitable purchase  sources from personal




experience welcome, either here or by PM  or e-mail. I am in the UK.









--




Best  regards,




Chris Wilson  _mailto:chris@chriswilson.tv_ (mailto:ch...@chriswilson.tv)














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Re: [time-nuts] Those helix antennas in the photos...

2012-06-05 Thread Rex

On 6/5/2012 5:36 AM, George Dubovsky wrote:

On (B) and (C), helices are tapered to broadband their frequency response.
Usually the pitch changes along with the diameter.

73,

geo - n4ua


I was just reading in the 3rd edition of Antenna Engineering Handbook, 
that the sharp taper at the end gives a better axial-ratio over a wider 
bandwidth (more circular as opposed to a bit of elliptical 
polarization). There is some trade-off as the gain is lowered a little too.




On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Michael Baker  wrote:


Time-Nutters--

What I saw in the photos of the helix antennas that I
found interesting was:

A) The tapered cone-shaped cup that some of the
 helix antennas sat in.   What does this do?  Most
helix antennas seem to sit over a flat ground plane
but these are different.

B) Some of the helix antennas are tapered in diameter
very gradually from the base to the top-end.  Why?

C) Some of the helix antennas that are tapered gradually
along their entire length have an abrupt taper at the end.
Why?

And lastly; what is the material that is used for winding the
helix elements onto?

I have some large sheets of copper foil with an adhesive
backing that would be ideal for fabricating helix antennas
similar to the ones seen in the photos.   I tried building a
3-turn helix to feed my 1.8 meter, 0.39 F/d dish on 1.7 GHz for
downlinking the NOAA HRPT digital imagery.  After several
iterations I finally only got mediocre performance.  I think
this was due to poor illumination of the dish.   I then tried
to build a circular polarity patch feed by scaling the dimensions
for a 2.4 GHz patch feed but this was a dismal failure as I never
could get the circular polarity right.   I finally wound up with a
coffee-can style feed which works OK.   Not wonderfully well,
but just OK.Here is a DropBox link to a recent image:
<  
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/**60102282/FLA%201130-3May12.JPG>

The HRPT imagery is pretty neat but now a group of us are
working on figuring out how to demodulate/decode and display
the much higher resolution (and far more natural looking)
imagery from the AQUA and TERRA birds.  These birds
imaging telemetry comes down at 8.2 GHz at 15 Mbps
in a Staggered Quadrature Phase Shift (SQPSK) format.
I am currently trying to come up with an efficient 8.2 GHz
feed and LNA or LNC for my dish.  Should be a fun project!
Here is a DropBox link to a sample TERRA image from the
NASA archives:

<  
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/**60102282/Web%20Terra-Aqua%**20Sample.jpg>

Mike Baker
--**---

_



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Re: [time-nuts] Antenna question about RHCP/LHCP I'm sure a time-nut can answer

2012-06-05 Thread Rex
I took a scan through Kraus "Antennas" since he did much of the 
definitive work on Helical antennas. In his chapter on Wave Polarization 
he gives a mathematical definition of Left- and Right-circular 
polarization, then quickly mentions that the IEEE definition is the 
opposite. He has a footnote: "This IEEE definition is opposite to the 
classical optics definition."


So it seems our current antenna engineering uses the IEEE definition for 
RHCP and LHCP, but earlier work on EM wave theory had defined 
right-circular and left-circular exactly reversed from IEEE. So, combine 
that with the reflection flipping and it is not hard to think why there 
might be confusion.


I looked all around for a simple definition of the RH, LH quality of the 
wave from a helix antenna. I assume I might have extracted it from pages 
of formulas and theoretical explanations, but why not just clearly state 
it in a book that is largely about helical antennas. Somewhere else (in 
Kraus) I read that the IEEE definition of a RHCP or LHCP wave from or to 
a helical antenna had the same handedness as the helix of the antenna. 
Unfortunately in that writing he did not bother to explicitly mention 
what he meant by the handedness of a helix. I assume he meant it to be 
the same as the handedness of a screw, but he didn't say that, so once 
again, a missed opportunity.


I'm not arguing with you, Chuck, just pointing out why there might be 
room for confusion in some circles. (Pun intended.)



On 6/5/2012 6:23 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:

I guarantee you it doesn't cause any controversy among those that
use circularly polarized antennas.

That the polarization changes from RHCP to LHCP when reflected is
certainly the cause of some confusion about the antennas.  A RHCP
antenna that directly emits a wave towards the source will become a LHCP
antenna if it is illuminating a parabolic dish.

The easiest way to think about it is to mentally think of the path from
the transmitter to the receiver as a very long piece of threaded rod, and
the wave being emitted as being a nut traveling on the rod.  No matter
which side of the rod you are observing from, you will observe a nut
traveling away from that end turning in the same direction (clockwise
for RHCP).

Another point of confusion could be that if you are standing at the
transmitter watching the nut travel away from you, it will be rotating
clockwise but if you are standing at the receiver watching the
nut traveling towards you, it will be rotating counter-clockwise.

Both cases are RHCP.

If I hired an engineer to work on circularly polarized antennas and he
didn't know this, I too would be thinking of firing him!

-Chuck Harris


David Kirkby wrote:

On 5 June 2012 01:12, Dave Martindale  wrote:

I don't think that's correct.


This is a funny topic. No matter where see it discussed, there are
people with different views on it. I looked on the edaforum

http://www.edaboard.com/forum26.html

and found a thread (can't find it now unfortunatey), where someone was
adament they needed to be one way (I forget whether both RHCP or
RHCP+LHCP), and someone else was adament a colleague nearly lost his
job after making that mistake. I think there was about a 50:50 mix of
views on the topic



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Re: [time-nuts] Different or defective FE-5680A?

2012-06-09 Thread Rex

On 6/9/2012 12:35 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:


Any idea WHY someone would design something like that?  A programable
frequency standard where the frequency does not come out of the box.

What next and audio amplifier that only drives an internal dummy load?
  Light bulb with a metal envelope?

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

Fairly common, I think. Their business is responding to big-customer 
RFQs. The customer told them what the specifications were and they 
responded with a price for various quantities. What's cheaper, make a 
new design or cripple an existing design to meet a customer request?


I worked for a big main-frame computer company once. If you had the 
secret knowledge, a simple jumper on one of the boards would enable a 
many-$k feature. (Not easy to find or do, but true.)


FEI and particularly the 5680A seems to be a prime example of many 
flavors of one product. Only FEI knows how many variations they did and 
that is between them and the customers that requested them. It appears 
they did at least one major redesign but kept the same model number.


Time-nuts members have been pretty good at figuring out differences and 
adaptations.
Read the KO4BB wiki and update it if new variations or modifications are 
found:

http://www.ko4bb.com/dokuwiki/doku.php

-Rex


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Re: [time-nuts] Leap Second Results

2012-07-01 Thread Rex

Nice list. You clearly have the disease. (Where do you find the time? :-)  )

I think the first, Z3810A, was meant to be Z3801A, correct?


On 6/30/2012 7:32 PM, BD Systems Inc. wrote:

In testing and loggging the Z3810A, Z3805A, Z3815A, Z3816A, 59503A, 58503B and 
the 59551A GPS Receivers, all of which sequenced as follows (Note Denver MST)
  
17:59:59

18:00:00
18:00:01
18:00:01 (at this point the Leap Second indicator was cleared).
  
Chuck Zabilski



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Re: [time-nuts] Lightsquared questionfor SFO area....

2012-07-27 Thread Rex
I've had a graph logging on my HP3816A in San Jose. I see one big glitch 
on 7/27 ~17:00 UTC. I don't know if it unlocked, nor if it was from 
something received, or some jump in my hardware. Other than that one 
jump, I don't see anything unusual over the last week or so.


There must be others around here who also have been logging GPSDO's.


On 7/27/2012 6:42 PM, Brian, WA1ZMS wrote:

Does anyone know if there is ANY recent active Lightsquared testing taking
place in the SFO area of the US?



I'm dealing with a day-job issue with GPS clocks in the Bay Area showing
"GPS unlocked" errors from 3rd party equipment.







-Brian, WA1ZMS



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Re: [time-nuts] Cables dor 10 mHz

2012-07-30 Thread Rex
Many years back I bought a long coil of the orange cable with N 
connectors on it at a flea market. Only when I got home did I notice 
that vampires had been gnawing on it in many places :-(

I should have known better and spotted the holes.

I'm pretty sure I know which box holds my vampire tool and a MAU or two, 
but I worked for 3Com starting in 86.



On 7/30/2012 5:02 PM, Pete Lancashire wrote:

Weird timing, I was digging through the attic and two weeks ago found
a box with AMP stinger repair kits, a couple unopened MAUs,
and at least one said tool or two in the bottom of the box. There use
to be a few N connectors but I still use them so they ended up in the
RF connector box.

I use to have a few spools of the cable but one ham radio swap meet
and they went fast.

One of MAUs is bigger then one of my Linux based single board
computers with a network jack ! And I bet cost more to buy.

-pete

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Chuck Harris  wrote:

Chris Albertson wrote:
...   I wonder how many


people here remember the old 10base5 stuff.  We used to call it
"Frozen yellow garden hose".  It was a perfect description.  I think
it was about 1980. And I still remember being astounded when I saw
that a "vampire tap" could work.


Or maybe more to the point, I wonder how many of us have installed
10base5 cable, and done vampire taps?  I think I still have one of
the tools around here somewhere... probably with my G-D wirewrap
gun.

-Chuck Harris




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Re: [time-nuts] What size graphs do people like? (How big is yourscreen?)

2012-08-08 Thread Rex

Hal,

I never tried to use SVG before, but after your messages tonight I 
played around with it a bit. I would never have expected it, but I think 
you are right about the issue being a server configuration.


I copied your SVG file and got the same results. On my local hard drive 
it opens as a graph. I copied it to my own web pages and I also saw it 
display as text.


I browsed around and found this SVG picture: 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/22/Heckert_GNU_white.svg
It displays fine at that link. I copied the svg file to my web 
directories (hosted by GoDaddy) and there the same file displays as text.


I have a debugging tool add-on on FireFox. I displayed a thing called 
'Response Headers' that (I think) come from the server. For the svg link 
on my pages I see one field: 'Content-Type: text/plain'. If I do the 
same response header display on the wikimedia.org link I see 
'Content-Type: image/svg+xml'. So that seems to be what makes it work or 
not work.


If you go to: http://validator.w3.org and enter your link into the 
address field 
(http://www.megapathdsl.net/~hmurray/time-nuts/coax/Front-5ns-800x600.svg) 
then click Check, you will get a message that sort of explains the 
situation, except I still don't know how to get the server configured 
for for svg file => 'Content-Type: image/svg+xml'.


So it seems most browsers are now ready for SVG, but many servers are 
not. Maybe someone else can give us more details on what change might be 
required. In the mean time it looks like I won't be using any SVG on my 
pages either.


-Rex


On 8/7/2012 11:57 PM, Hal Murray wrote:

albertson.ch...@gmail.com said:

So you are saying that SVG can't work because one example of it is broken.
   Also, there are other vector formats, like Postscript and PDF.

No.  I think my ISP's web server has a simple misconfiguration.

It does work for ps and pdf, at least with my copy of Firefox.
   http://www.megapathdsl.net/~hmurray/time-nuts/test/

ps and pdf, at least the way I see them, are not in the same boat as SVG.
SVG is an image format that can easily be included in a html page.  ps and
pdf are stand alone.  They assume they control the whole setup and are
targeted at paper.  Think 8.5x11 or A4.

Yes, if you have a good pdf display program, you can zoom in/out.  But I
haven't seen pdf graphs included inside normal html pages.

Again, my knowledge of this area is not-great.  I could easily have missed
something.






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Re: [time-nuts] Understanding Oliver Collins Paper "Design of Low Jitter Hard Limiters"

2012-08-21 Thread Rex

On 8/21/2012 1:22 PM, David wrote:

On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:50:43 -0600,  wrote:


Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum.
It looks like a lively discussion on various topics.

A colleague of mine here at Agilent pointed me to this paper entitled "The Design of Low 
Jitter Hard Limiters" by Oliver Collins. In Bruce Griffiths' precision time in frequency 
webpage, this paper is described as "seminal."
(http://www.ko4bb.com/~bruce/ZeroCrossingDetectors.html)

Since I'm trying to create a limiter that will accept frequencies ranging from 1 MHz to 100 MHz, I thought it would be 
good to understand the conclusions of this paper (if not the mathematics as well).  The mathematics turned out to be 
quite challenging to decode. Has someone on this forum unraveled the equations? It appears Collins has recommendations 
on the bandwidth and gain of a jitter minimizing limiter, and then extends this analysis to provide the bandwidth and 
gain of a cascade of limiters.  But the application is still fuzzy.  In figure 5, he shows a graph showing the 
dependence of jitter on crossing time.  Is the crossing time (implied by equations 7) considered a design parameter one 
can vary? Also, on figure 4, the "k" parameter has been varied to show the rising waveform as a function of 
"k".  The threshold is always assumed to be 0.5.  So could "k" be related to "tau", the 
time constant of the RC filter?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Yours

Raj

I would love to take a look at this but the links to the paper at the
IEEE are dead.  My Google search just turned up others looking for the
same paper.


Just search for the title on IEEE -
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?newsearch=true&queryText=The+Design+of+Low+Jitter+Hard+Limiters&x=29&y=18

Of course then you need to figure out how to pay IEEE for the privilege 
of reading the 672 kb paper.




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Re: [time-nuts] Isotemp OCXO trimpot question...

2012-08-28 Thread Rex

Read more carefully, Bob. It was a joke based on a typo.


On 8/28/2012 5:44 PM, Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

I wouldn't go to crazy digging up a 10K pot. I suspect that anything in the 10K 
to 50K range will work ok.

Bob

On Aug 28, 2012, at 8:24 PM, jmfranke  wrote:


Now I need to find a 10 KW potentiometer!

John

--
From: "Jerry"
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 8:10 PM
To: "'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'"
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Isotemp OCXO trimpot question...


I don't know if the list allows attachments but I tried to attach to this
email a datasheet for a very similar Isotemp 10Mhz OCXO (Model OCXO134-10;
PN 6624.2).   Just in case the attachment doesn't come thru here is the
relevant section.

I am not certain whether the pins are the same as your model but I believe
all the Isotemp OCXO have same arrangement:

3. ELECTRICAL FREQUENCY ADJUSTMENT
3.1. Range>  ±0.45 PPM
<  ±1.2 PPM (At time of shipment) (Referenced
to nominal frequency)
3.2. Control 0 VDC to Vref (0 VDC to +8 VDC ) or a 10 kW
potentiometer connected between pins 2 and 4 with wiper connected to pin 3.
3.3. Slope Positive
3.4. Center Vref/2 ±10% of Vref (+4 VDC to +0.8 VDC)


Jerry





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Re: [time-nuts] Isotemp OCXO trimpot question...

2012-08-28 Thread Rex
I would think the knob on a 10 KW pot would look something like the 
latch wheel on a navy hatch.


To need the 10 KW rating on a 10K ohm pot, ohms law seems to tell me 
Vref would be close to 10 KV. Perhaps a bit high for most varactor diodes.



On 8/28/2012 6:13 PM, Michael Blazer wrote:

The ohm symbol in the symbol character set is the same code as the "W".

I've seen some 10 kW rheostats.  You could use the OCXO as decoration 
on the shaft.


Mike

On 8/28/2012 7:24 PM, jmfranke wrote:

Now I need to find a 10 KW potentiometer!

John

--
From: "Jerry" 
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 8:10 PM
To: "'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'" 


Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Isotemp OCXO trimpot question...

I don't know if the list allows attachments but I tried to attach to 
this
email a datasheet for a very similar Isotemp 10Mhz OCXO (Model 
OCXO134-10;
PN 6624.2).   Just in case the attachment doesn't come thru here 
is the

relevant section.

I am not certain whether the pins are the same as your model but I 
believe

all the Isotemp OCXO have same arrangement:

3. ELECTRICAL FREQUENCY ADJUSTMENT
3.1. Range > ±0.45 PPM
< ±1.2 PPM (At time of shipment) (Referenced
to nominal frequency)
3.2. Control 0 VDC to Vref (0 VDC to +8 VDC ) or a 10 kW
potentiometer connected between pins 2 and 4 with wiper connected to 
pin 3.

3.3. Slope Positive
3.4. Center Vref/2 ±10% of Vref (+4 VDC to +0.8 VDC)


Jerry




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Re: [time-nuts] REF osc distribution.

2012-09-05 Thread Rex

A couple links on what Bob is referencing:

http://www.ko4bb.com/~bruce/IsolationAmplifiers.html

http://www.ke5fx.com/norton.htm


On 9/5/2012 9:46 AM, Bob Camp wrote:

Hi

There are a number of discrete transistor buffers that have very good
isolation and short term stability / phase noise performance. I'd take a
look at the one from the NIST papers and Bruce's more modern re-design.  All
are in the archives. http://tf.boulder.nist.gov/general/pdf/498.pdf is a
pretty good place to start.

Mostly what they do is to run a common emitter amplifier followed by several
common base amplifiers. They may or may not follow that with a buffer. Each
channel gets a separate string of amplifiers. All the common emitter amps
are driven in parallel by the reference source.

The transistors used are normally cheap stuff like the 2N3904. Except for
the power supply nothing in the circuit costs much. None of it is hard to
find.

Bob

-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Rui Martins
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2012 10:19 AM
To: time-nuts@febo.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] REF osc distribution.

Bob and Paul,



I have at moment 6 equipment's maximum which I want sync with 10MHZ only.

The video distribution is an idea but the kit from Ve2zaz have other way but
the problem is the isolation.

I have 2 independent Nortel GPSTM but I don't need redundancy for the job.

G3ruh and ve2zaz Kits and rubidium oscillators only for analyzing the data
and compare.

I will use one of them with a doubler to get 20MHZ for driving a transceiver
(Crazy huh).

Any ideas will be considered.



Regards



CT1EBH

Rui Jorge Martins

Proudly user of FT-ONE, FT-980, FT736R, FT726R, FT-2000 and FL-7000

73!







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Re: [time-nuts] FTS 1000B oscillator for sale

2012-09-10 Thread Rex

Per the datasheet I just found...
http://www.gigatest.net/datum/1000b-r2.pdf

it should be 5 MHz and 10 MHz. I assume the 10 MHz is from an internal 
doubler.


Corby,
Another question. I just found that datasheet but nothing about the 
1000A. What's the difference between A and B?


-Rex


On 9/10/2012 1:38 PM, Tom Knox wrote:

Hi Corby;
What is the freq?
Thaks;
Thomas Knox




To: time-nuts@febo.com
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:22:56 -0700
From: cdel...@juno.com
Subject: [time-nuts] FTS 1000B oscillator for sale

Hi,

I put an FTS 1000B oscillator on sale at eBay see item # 320980495168 if
you are interested.

I will also be selling several FTS1000A in the near future.

Thanks,

Corby




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Re: [time-nuts] messy workbenches

2012-09-28 Thread Rex

Another serious contender in the messy but productive realm was Bob Pease.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/social-mania-blog/4217103/How-messy-is-your-desk-

Quite ironic that Bob died while leaving the memorial for Jim Williams.
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/readerschoice/4368147/Analog-engineering-legend-Bob-Pease-killed-in-car-crash



On 9/28/2012 6:48 PM, Grant Saviers wrote:
George's is a far distant competitor to the bench of the late Jim 
Williams, see 
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/an-analog-life-remembering-jim-williams/


Which was on display at the Computer History Museum and just was 
returned to Linear Tech.


Grant Saviers




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Re: [time-nuts] "Best" GPSDO

2012-09-28 Thread Rex

On 9/28/2012 8:31 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:

You can guess the real question here: "how good does the 10MHz
reference need to be to test real-world receivers?



Pretty sure the answer is good enough, but... Depends on the receiver 
and what it is receiving.


I got interested in time-nuttyness because I am a ham. My interests are 
mainly in the microwave bands, typically 10 GHz and higher. I got a 
couple GPSDOs primarily to make accurate measurements in the many-GHz 
range by feeding ref inputs to my test equipment. Mostly I wasn't 
interested in the nitty-gritty, just being good enough for good 
"trustworty" results. Before the GPSDOs, getting accuracy to 100's of Hz 
at 10 GHz was an act of faith. Now, to Hz is pretty easy.


Recently I got involved in building some boards for an intermediate IF 
(is that redundant?) for a 24 GHz radio that have their LO at 3600 MHz 
and are locked to 10 MHz. (Details to be presented at Microwave Update 
2012 in a couple weeks -- http://microwaveupdate.org/ . Feel free to 
sign up and attend if you are interested.)


Around 2006, John Miles shared with us some measurements he did using 
microwave "brick" phase locked oscillators to get the phase noise from 
OCXOs multiplied up enough to see the differences on a decent spectrum 
analyzer. ( http://www.ke5fx.com/brick/brick.htm ) He used an 8566b SA 
and his own PN  software ( http://www.ke5fx.com/gpib/pn.htm ) to drive 
it with GPIB to make the measurements. Many thanks to John for all he 
has shared with us.


I hadn't made any measurements like this before, but this seemed like a 
good way to get a feel for the quality of the 3600 MHz boards (which 
turned out good.) I also have an 8566b SA, so that with John's PN 
software seemed like a good setup to try. The 3600 board has a loop 
filter about 10 KHz wide so in the audio range the output PN is related 
to the quality of the 10 MHz reference.


My two main frequency references are two GPSDOs, an HP Z3816A and (few 
years ago added) a Z3805A Sumsung. Both have an MTI 260 OCXO as their 
internal locked source. Testing the 3600 MHz board using these two 
references, the best phase noise came with the 3805 at about -90 dBc. 
The 3816 was about 7 dB higher. Not sure why. The MTI 260 oscillators 
are 5 MHz so are doubled in the GPSDOs to 10 MHz. Maybe that is part of 
it, or maybe the two MTI 260s are that much different.


I also measured with two small eBay oscillators from China -- all in 
equivalent small packages about 2 inch square by 1.5 inch high. A CIC 
STP2145A gave results similar to the 3816. A Morion MV89A was the worst 
so far, about 10 dB higher than the 3805. Clearly, the affects of the 
the oscillator PN are quite visible when multiplied by 360 to 3600 MHz. 
(20 log 360 = 51 dB.) I'm not sure about the exact accuracy of my 
measurements, but I am certain I am seeing the relative effects of the 
PN from the OCXOs.


I have a bunch of 10 and 5 MHz OCXOs I have accumulated and now that I 
have this tool for evaluating, I need to take the time to fire them up 
and sort them by PN quality. I guess I need to build a trustworthy 
doubler too, for the 5 to 10 MHz like the ones on Bruce's pages at KO4BB.






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Re: [time-nuts] Mouser connector

2012-10-14 Thread Rex

I think these are correct...
24-pin LOPRO WRMNT
3M D-Subminiature Connector
is printed on the envelopes from Mouser.

Plug
Mouser 517-3548-100 , (3M 3458-1000)

and
Socket
Mouser 517-3549-1000 , (3M 3549-1000)

If I remember right when I ordered about a year ago, there was a problem 
in the Mouser catalog pages where the picture was wrong for the gender 
of one or both types, so be careful about the pictures.



On 10/14/2012 5:00 PM, Joseph Gray wrote:

I remember someone mentioning long ago about making GPIB cables with
ribbon cable and IDC connectors from Mouser. I can't find that
information again. What is the Mouser part number for those IDC
connectors?

Thanks,

Joe Gray
W5JG

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Re: [time-nuts] HP Z3805A com port and monitoring questions

2012-10-15 Thread Rex

On 10/14/2012 10:43 PM, Ulrich Bangert wrote:

There's another telco model that has an MTI 260 oscillator, that I
think was manufactured in Korea but does not have the Samsung logo on
the front.  I don't know much about that one.

I do own a Z3805 WITH the Samsung logo on the front AND WITH a MTI 260 inside.

Regards
Ulrich Bangert



Me too -- same description of Z3805. For some reason the output of that 
3805 seems a bit cleaner (in PN) than my Z3816A which also has an MTI 
260 oscillator.


BTW, Ulrich, I use your software as the main monitor for both. Thanks 
for all your work!




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Re: [time-nuts] Z3805 etc

2012-10-15 Thread Rex
Yes, 5 MHz MTI 260 in both my Z3085 and Z3816A, doubled somewhere inside 
for the 10 MHz output.



On 10/15/2012 12:32 AM, Azelio Boriani wrote:

5MHz? Then it is doubled to have 10MHz at the output...

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Murray Greenmanwrote:


Ulrich is right about the use of MTI 260 use in GPSDOs. I have a
Korean-made Z3815A clone (it's labelled Agilent) which has a little
daughter board with a 5MHz MTI 260 DOCXO in place of the original E1938A
used in these models. I understand that there were production and
reliability issues with the E1938A.

73,
Murray ZL1BPU




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Re: [time-nuts] Z3801A Problem

2012-11-07 Thread Rex
Back in the early 2000's Randy Warner was working at Synergy and posting 
here. He provided a lot of good and accurate details about the Oncores 
to the list. You might want to search the archive for his name and scan 
through the posts. He was a fabulous, accurate source while he was 
posting here, but left Synergy around 2006-2007.


One document he provided is this:
http://www.febo.com/pages/hardware/VPCommands.pdf

In there he mentions the VP firmware versions and that Synergy could 
re-flash the firmware for you, but I doubt that option still exists. I 
think it may have been mentioned that there was no way to update the 
firmware outside of the factory. That is what I remember.


-Rex

On 11/7/2012 5:05 AM, Azelio Boriani wrote:

Never found an Oncore firmware file... can you point me to anyone of them?
I'm curious to see one.

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 1:30 PM, Bob Camp  wrote:


Hi

There were a *lot* of firmware updates to the Oncores. I don't know if the
re-flash images are still out there or not. If they are, it wouldn't hurt
to upgrade the card. I don't think it will fix your problem, but it won't
hurt either.

Bob

On Nov 7, 2012, at 1:06 AM, Ed Palmer  wrote:


Hi Mike,

My unit has the standard 6 channel VP.  In fact, here's the ID message:

COPYRIGHT 1991-1995 MOTOROLA INC.
SFTW P/N # 98-P39972M
SOFTWARE VER # 8
SOFTWARE REV # 4
SOFTWARE DATE  13 JUL 1995
MODEL #B1121P1114
HDWR P/N # _
SERIAL #   SSG0239632
MANUFACTUR DATE 7H18
OPTIONS LISTIB

I understand that the 'B1' start to the model number means that it's

quite old.

I don't remember if I ever did a full reset so I just did one. We'll see

what happens.

Thanks,
Ed

On 11/6/2012 10:20 PM, Mike S wrote:

On 11/6/2012 2:59 PM, Ed Palmer wrote:

But if this is a firmware issue, shouldn't there be lots of Z3801As

with

this problem?  I suspect that there's a fault with my unit, but I can't
imagine what.

Does your unit by chance have an 8 channel Oncore VP instead of the

stock 6 channel one?

Also, have you tried a full reset (:system:preset)?

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Re: [time-nuts] GENIUS by Stephen Hawking (PBS TV), with 5071A cesium clocks

2016-05-19 Thread Rex
I just watched it on PBS. Nicely done recreation of your GREAT 
experiment, Tom. Good to see you had a couple personal appearances, and 
especially for the final results.


Looks like your SR620 counter had a hyperdrive undercarriage lighting 
option. :-)




On 5/17/2016 7:50 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote:

The TV show is tomorrow, Wednesday evening. 8/9 PM, or something like that.

Here are fresh web pages with background information, photos, and plots:

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/photos.htm

I have no idea how minor my role is in the actual TV episode, but if nothing 
else, the above two pages will share some time nuts sort of details of the 
clock experiment itself. If you have any questions let me know.

/tvb

- Original Message -
From: "Tom Van Baak" 
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" 
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 12:00 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] GENIUS by Stephen Hawking (PBS TV),with 5071A cesium clocks


Fellow time nuts,

Here in the US, a new six-part TV series on National Geographic / PBS starts next 
Wednesday, May 18th, 2016. The title is "Genius by Stephen Hawking" and episode 
1 is: Can We Time Travel?

Having not seen it yet, I can't make a promise of its "SNR" (Science to 
Nonsense Ratio). It might be quite educational, or at least, very entertaining. And I'm 
definitely going to watch it with my family.

So why do I mention this?

Well, I spent most of December 2015 and January 2016 working with the UK-based 
producers of the show -- in order to pull off another Einstein 100th 
anniversary, general relativity, cesium atomic clock, gravitational time 
dilation experiment. The location chosen was 9000+ foot Mt Lemmon, near Tucson, 
Arizona.

The Hawking series covers a wide variety of topics, and this atomic clock bit 
is just one very small part. They were inspired by the DIY experiment I did ( 
http://leapsecond.com/great2005/tour/ ) and they wanted to create and film 
something similar. So I offered to help. Scenes with (me? and) my 5071A cesium 
clocks and hp 53132A / SR620 time interval counters are in episode 1.

The PR link to the episode is:

http://www.pbs.org/genius-by-stephen-hawking/episodes/episode-1/

Attached is a photo. I will post lots of technical info, plots, photos and FAQ 
here next week:

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/

/tvb
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Re: [time-nuts] WWVB remodulator for the spectracom 8170 the schematic is to large

2013-06-17 Thread Rex

On 6/17/2013 9:52 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:

Here is an even smaller version, at the same resolution.The trick is to
remove the background.  Then all you have is mostly a plank sheet and a
small amount of ink that compresses very well.

What you do is adjust the contrast until you have only pure white and pure
black.  That alone does 90% of the work.  Save it as a monochrome file to
kill the color channels then set the JPG compression as strong as you can.

That is basically the steps I used to make my version, except the jpg 
encoding. Jpg is great for photos but not ideal for line art. If you 
zoom into the jpg version you will see clouds of noise around the line 
features. Gif doesn't do that.


When I made my gif version last night I used 64-level grayscale. That's 
more than necessary. I just tried a version with 8-level grayscale and 
the file size went from 95k to 43k.


Of course the other key compression was reducing resolution. The 
original was 6600 x 5100 pixels. I cut down to 1400 x 1082 which still 
may be a bit more than needed.


This is a bit off-topic for the group, though.


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Re: [time-nuts] What is the deal with li...@lazygranch.com

2013-06-18 Thread Rex

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Re: [time-nuts] What is the deal with li...@lazygranch.com

2013-06-18 Thread Rex
OK, I sent that last email as a short text message, but in html-only 
format. Seems the html got deleted, leaving an empty message.


I suspect that is the problem with li...@lazygranch.com messages 
recently. On another email reflector we started seeing a batch of this 
lately.




On 6/18/2013 5:25 PM, Rex wrote:

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Re: [time-nuts] The "auction site"?

2013-07-02 Thread Rex

On 7/1/2013 11:59 PM, Doug Calvert wrote:

Hello,
  Why do people go out of their way to avoid writing ebay on this list?
The statements are purposely written so that it is obvious that the
"insert mystical phrase"  is ebay and not a generic auction site. What
history am I not aware of?



I dunno either. There seems to be a trend in all engineering-friendly 
sites / lists to not mention the name eBay outright. Maybe they worry 
about conjuring up something like  the movie "Beetlejuice"?


There are pros and cons to liking the online trading. A couple decades 
back I liked going to the local swaps, but now it is easier to sit here 
and do my browsing or make my bids online. Many of the old sellers have 
gone to the internet or base their pricing on the current "going rate". 
The negative is that cheap deals are getting rarer as the dealers will 
swoop in if the price is too good, to buy it and sell higher later. The 
good is that there is much more stuff to entice me than the random local 
supplies usually could offer.


There might be some oasis of good deals (like MIT swap?) and I might 
tend to sell locally at a small bargain, but that is no longer common.


Like it or not, eBay is the main game now. and I see no reason to encode 
mentions of EBAY. Who here hasn't made a purchase or sale that way?



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Re: [time-nuts] RS 232

2013-07-26 Thread Rex

FWIW, it was clear as mud for me too.

Bert began with, "Since joining time  nuts over four years ago I have 
not used a  single MAX

232 chip. Two  reasons MAX do not give me isolation and do generate  noise
in critical  applications."

From that I took that he was doing RS232 using opto isolators. That 
implies + and - voltages to me. Where do they come from and where are 
they relative to the isolation boundary? If the goal is really 
isolation, how do these supplies get isolated? If the noise is cured by 
isolation, these details seem important as the supplies need isolation 
too. Maybe the switcher in the MAX232 is causing the noise. Then how do 
we get a negative supply from, say, +5V without the noise? Then, maybe 
he was saying RS232 sucks and this other way (not RS232 compatible) 
works better.


The word picture of Bert's solution, which provided more details, left 
me less much less than clear too. Maybe I'm just not up on circuit 
shorthand terminology enough to follow what sort of current limiter is 
limiting what current to what, and what is being blocked by a diode from 
which negative level. Not really sure if I even got the big picture of 
what he is describing. Is it an isolated equivalent of a MAX232 
interface or something else that wouldn't talk to an RS232 device?


So, more clarification, or possibly that picture (~= 1k words) might 
help. Or maybe I'm just obtuse and everyone else is getting it. (Seems 
Marki may also be in the confused camp.)




On 7/25/2013 3:34 PM, Mark C. Stephens wrote:

Although your description,
" I prefer the use of two H11 opto couplers which
work  perfect. On the receiving end the diode along with a current limiter
and  blocking diode for the negative level works perfect. On the output side
a  power  source is needed." Is a perfect circuit description, I'd be more 
confident with a schematic :)


--marki


-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf 
Of ewkeh...@aol.com
Sent: Friday, 26 July 2013 5:32 AM
To: time-nuts@febo.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] RS 232

I do not understand your question, I am referring to low noise applications  
like counters for dual mixers or other AV measurements, but also Shera and even 
 Tbolt where external noise should be kept to a minimum. When you chase 1 E-14, 
 isolation is key and I always like to err on the cautious side and as I stated 
 we use blue tooth or USB but in the case of USB there are always H11 in the  
circuit. Some still like to use RS 232 and the subject came up and I have on my 
 boards H11's like on the counter Corby uses but he ended up using an external  
power source and I like to eliminate that requirement. David had the right  
answer using the power that the RS 232 mouse uses out of a DB 9, started 
looking  but I do not have one any more and I can not find any data.
Bert
  
  
In a message dated 7/25/2013 2:48:43 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ma...@non-stop.com.au writes:


Hi  Bert,

I am sure your circuit is clear in your head, but would you mind  attaching 
detail?
You have perked my interest with the "low-noise" keyword  ;)


-marki

-Original Message-
From:  time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On
Behalf Of  ewkeh...@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, 25 July 2013 11:39 PM
To:  time-nuts@febo.com
Subject: [time-nuts] RS 232

Since joining time  nuts over four years ago I have not used a  single MAX
232 chip. Two  reasons MAX do not give me isolation and do generate  noise
in critical  applications. I prefer the use of two H11 opto couplers which
work  perfect. On the receiving end the diode along with a current limiter
and  blocking diode for the negative level works perfect. On the output side
a  power  source is needed. If one uses an USB adapter it does have the + 5
volt which  again works perfect.  How ever many prefer to use RS 232
direct and that is  why I hope to get some comments and suggestions from  the
list. Corby used on our  counter circuit that he described a separate  power
source.
Present MAX circuits use a + 1.4 volt threshold but   considering legacy
the question is what should the voltage swing be to make  it  compatible for
most PC's and what options exist to get the necessary  voltage. In  the past
other pins on the RS 232 port where an ideal power  source. Still an  option?
Bert  Kehren
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