On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 10:34 AM, Robert Liesenfeld <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello- >
> I'm considering the purchase of a GPS receiver to serve as my workbench > 10MHz source. Buy a Thunderbolt first. This is I think the best value and technicaly hard to beat. These is much support for the t-bolt here. many people know about them. > ...I have read that > a rubidium standard's short-term stability is not as good as a GPSDO, and > that they're mainly used for holdover - is my understanding correct? My > thought is to (eventually) use a rubidium device to stabilize a GPSDO > should the receiver lose satellite signal. Hold over is their best use. But they work well as a portable standard and if you need something that can work quickly after power is applied with no need to set up a GPS antenna and wait for a self-survey. I is actually very unlikely that the GPS signal will fail. This might happen on a cell tower where some transmitter might fail and jam GPS but it is unlikely at your home. I think the Rb's best use is is portable or temporary uses where yo can't set up a GPS. One more thing. If your budget were lower you could build a GPSDO using a $20 GPS and a $20 OCXO plus some "glue" logic and get pretty good performance for about $100. The reason to build might be any of these (1) you want soething that uses very low power (2) you need some feature like automated failover to Rb on loss of signal, or (3) self education. Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ 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.
