I'm weighing in a little late on this one but wanted to make a few comments
regarding cables and connectors in hopes that a prior poster may not have
covered these thoughts.
With regards to single-shield coaxial cables, I think we are all aware that
shielding effectiveness can vary widely between cables of the same type. I
have seen cable shielding as bad as 50% and as good approaching 90%. Of
course, anything below 100% means that they are leaky - for either inward or
outward bound signals. But one little cautionary indication as to the
quality of the cable and its shielding is stamped on the cable itself. If
you see a description saying RG-xx "Type," you are basically dealing with a
cable of which the manufacturer is saying that it is like that specific type
of cable but does not necessarily meet the specifications one would expect.
So, if you want a cable to meet a certain quality, use a cable without the
"Type" designation.
In your posting, you mentioned the words "radio room." That in itself is a
red flag meaning possible sources of strong RF. In situations like that you
must make sure that any circuits requiring good isolation from other
interfering sources must contain adequate shielding be it circuit- or
cable-wise. I think we all are aware of that consideration. I have seen
instances of strong enough RF sources actually setting up circulating
currents in adjacent coaxial cable shields that couples the stray power into
the innocent cable and also affects the impedance characteristics of same.
This has also been seen in the larger solid copper transmission lines as
well as microwave waveguides.
With regards to connector selection, during my life in Colorado working with
the US government, I once attended a RF connector course at the (then) NBS.
It was quite an eye opener with regards to the connect-disconnect cycle life
of the typical coaxial cable connector. If you want a reliable connection,
don't start with a worn connector. And the choice of manufacturer of the
connector can be as important as well with regards to the construction and
plating materials used. When I compare the typical easily-obtained "Jameco"
or "Marlin P Jones" type of connector to a better made product such as a
true MIL item on a network analyzer, one can see a noticeable difference
between the impedance and VSWR characteristics. It has been long known that
the simple nickel-plate connector can cause problems over time in an
installation from changing contact resistance and such. The manufacturer
"RF Industries" still uses silver & gold plating on their types of RF
connectors as compared to the cheaper nickel-plated types and I have found
these to be very reliable with a cost slightly higher than the cheaper
nickel plated types.
Greg
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 07:28:19 -0500
From: Bob Camp <[email protected]>
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Don't use cheap cables -- a cautionary tale
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Hi
Termination is important. An open cable typically reflects energy down
both the inside and outside of the shield. I'd bet the same thing is true
to a much lesser extent of an open T connector.
The list of nasties is quite long, so there is no one magic thing that
fixes all problems.
Bob
On Mar 3, 2013, at 10:36 PM, Mark Spencer <[email protected]> wrote:
This is a useful thread IMHO.
Re the continuous beat note interference issue, I believe I've
encountered this when evaluating a Datum1000B. At first I saw a
periodic change in frequency of several E-10, the typical period was
several hundred seconds. Turning off all the un needed gear in my lab
except for a few ocxo's that i don't want to turn off and using double
shielded RG400 cables without adapters for all the interconnections
seemed to make the issue go away. All the outputs from the un used
ocxo's were also terminated with bnc or sma terminators. Even the BNC
T connectors I typically leave connected to the inputs of my HP5370B's
(along with 50 ohm terminators) seemed to cause issues in this
application.
This issue has also prompted me to give up on my plans to move my GPSDO's
from my radio room to my lab, as it's nice to be able to leave the
GPSDO's running into a terminator vs having to shut them off.
I've never really put much effort into tracking down the root cause of
this issue but I suspect it is similar to what John mentioned.
My FTS1050 (which IIRC is based on a datum 1000) doesn't seem to have
this issue, building enclosures for my Datum1000's is on my post
retirement to do list as I suspect running them without an enclosure may
be contributing to this problem.
As far as I know my BVA Ocxo is immune from this issue as well.
Regards Mark Spencer
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