Charl, I am very new to this as well and I had similar goals you to yours.
In the end, all of these standards use a crystal oscillator. It is just a matter of what is doing the disciplining. The Cesium Beam, Rubidium, and GPS signals all discipline a crystal oscillator. The quality of the signal and the quality of the crystal oscillator ultimately determine the quality of your 'standard'. I agree with the comments about the lifespan of the Cesium and Rubidium references and the 'crap shoot' of buying Cesium Beam standards from eBay. However, it is fun to play with these and I have had good luck finding 'resuscitatable' equipment. The only option for a primary, independent, stand alone reference is a Cesium Beam or higher. The rest are secondary standards and must be calibrated against something else. If you have a Cesium Beam and run it in the 'CS OFF' position, pumping the tube down and leaving the crystal oscillator on continuously, you get pretty amazing stability from just the crystal oscillator after it has been on for a couple of months. You can compare it to a GPSDO or you can turn on the Cesium Beam (only when you need it) and be 'independent of the grid', so to speak. A GPSDO such as the TBolt gives you NIST linked accuracy and a clock that you can set to GPS time or UTC time with adjustments for the time delay in your antenna coax, etc., to get you as close as possible. If your Cesium Beam also has a clock, you can set it to match the GPSDO and watch the two to see if it stays within a second per year with the 'CS OFF'. However, running a Cesium or Rubidium continuously will likely be expensive in the long term. In any event, this is a very addicting activity and has been the source of great satisfaction except for my wife who thinks I have 'too much stuff'. Good luck. Joe _______________________________________________ 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.
