From: Hal Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] List of time synchronization hardware and software Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:50:19 -0800 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hal, I'm gonna babble some here, so the real collectors can correct me and point out all the nitty gritty details that I don't know. > > I think a new Caesium-beam cascade is *MUCH* cheaper. > > Can somebody give me a lesson on this area? Is there a good web page that > answers questions like these? Go to leapsecond to get a clue. > What does a Caesium/Rubidium box cost? Any reason to prefer one or the other? Caesium is far more stable than the Rubidium, but the Rubidium is much cheaper. I don't have the prices in the back of my head, but I think I recall something like 50 kUSD and 2-3 kUSD. A hydrogen is somewhere in the 100-150 kUSD up to 400-500 kUSD. Then you can get used gear cheaper naturally. > What sort of lifetime do they have and/or how much care/fiddling do they take? Depends. Caesium is some 6-8 years normally, but the high performance tubes are less (high performance tubes burns more ceasium per time unit). Rubidium have life-span of 10-20 years. The failure mechanisms are quite different. > Do they need any calibration or tuning or setup magic, or do I just plug them > in and get a known frequency out? If they are in a good condition they phase-lock, but the time to phase-lock may be fairly long. Unless they are completely out of tune you should not have to do anything to trim them up. > Does it make sense for a non-wizard to get something from ebay and if so, > what do I look for? Any obvious models/manufacturers to look for and/or > avoid? If you look at ebay right now there are three Caesium clocks available. Only one of them phase-locks, and that takes 40 min. If they don't phase-lock, then stay away unless you know how to fix that model. OK, that was my very schetchy oversight view. I recommend you to learn some about the physics in these things, that helps to understand what makes them tick and what might be wrong. Cheers, Magnus - still Cs-less _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
