Greetings, all-- As a newbie to this list, I am playing catchup in a number of arenas so please forgive me if I post something which is old news to most.
In any event, something John Miles said pointed me towards investigating what it would take to cobble up something that would get me to the next higher level of frequency accuracy that exceeded my Trimble Thunderbolt. My primary purpose is to have the most (relatively) accurate 10MHz or 100MHz frequency reference to use in measurements above 2GHz but below 24GHz. Obviously, a somewhat anemic piggy-bank prohibits me from dropping several thousands of $$$ (choke) on a surplus cesium reference, so I am going to have to settle for rubidium. I see lots of rubidium oscillators come and go on eBay for several hundred $$. I started out to see what it would take to replace the OCXO in my T-bolt with a rubidium oscillator. One concern I had was paying $400 for a surplus rubidium oscillator and then discovering that it only had a year or two of life left in it. I stumbled across an interesting (but a tad dated) Air Force study titled: Observations on the Reliability of Rubidium Frequency Standards on Block II/IIA GPS Satellites It is found at: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1995/Vol%2027_10.pdf It may well turn out that after the tears dry following the realization that I probably cannot afford a tighter frequency reference than my T-bolt provides I will just have to resign myself to the E-12 of the T-Bolt and be happy... Your thoughts and comments are most welcome-- Mike Baker Micanopy, Florida ----------------------------- _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
