Hi Everyone, Recently, I have acquired a HP Frequency Counter and Signal Genny, and have set up a small "lab" in the house. This is great, but I'd like to hook it into my 3816A, which is 70 ft away in an outhouse, along with all my radio gear, to at least compare it to the 10811 in the Frequency Counter.
I'd rather not drill a hole and run a cable (There are other issues with that as well as the hole, the outhouse is the other side of the garden path from the lab!) I do have fibre to the house for N/W connectivity, and (unshielded) CAT6 from the patch panel to the "lab". Two problems here. One the patch panel is the other side of the house from the lab (so running a dedicated piece of coax is out without taking up the floors..), and Two, 10MHz over unshielded CAT6 is not good practice, to say the least, and simply not going to happen. So I started looking at other possibilities. It seems a lot of GPSDOs steer the Oscillator by using the PPS. Is that right ? 1 Hz over UTP is a bit more reasonable than 10 MHz, but I did not find many 10MHz oscillators with a PPS input. I thought of using a Z3801 instead of the Z3816, but patching out from the EFC SBM connector, then (optionally) converting that to fibre, sending it up the garden to the house, converting back to copper, then the CAT 6 to the Lab where a second Z3801 would sit I would rather fibre between the house and outhouse for EMC and grounding reasons. My hope is that thee 10MHz Osc would then be steered from the remote Z3801, although the lab Z3801 itself would complain bitterly about no lock no doubt. Does anyone have any comments on this madhat scheme ? Or have other suggestions of how I might go about getting that 10MHz signal converted to fibre, and back again to send into the "lab" equipment ? What are other people's experience with similar issues ? What do the "big boys" like NIST and NPL do to manage this ? I know they transfer time over large distances, and I know NPL transfer frequency as well to certain customers, so I guess other similar institutions do as well [Note, for me, plug and play is better. Soldering irons do not like me, and I wouldn't trust myself with one anywhere near anything like a precision instrument :), although putting pre-built modules in a metal box I'm okay with, but plug-and play preferred.] (Googling for fibre converters or similar these days brings up such a noise floor of Ethernet, Any suggestions on the best terms or part numbers to use to find raw (assembled) fibre transmitter / receiver modules that might be suitable would be gratefully received) Best Regards Iain _______________________________________________ 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.
