I know of NPL in the UK, and NIST in the USA, but is anyone aware of other "standard labs". In particular I am looking for the Australian equivalent. A Google search came across "Standards Australia"
http://www.standards.org.au/ but I don't know how "authoritative" this is. There is basically nothing stopping any body here setting up a web site claiming to be the countries leading non-government standards labs. I have a very healthy skepticism of calibration laboratories in general NIST for example does have a ".gov" domain, which gives it a bit more credibility than a typical .com. NPL does not have a .gov, despite we use it in the UK. I found the The National Measurement Institute (NMI) http://www.measurement.gov.au/ which is probably the one I am looking for. There are people on this list who I would trust to produce a list of national standards labs more than I would from a Google search or Wikipedia. There are a couple of things I am looking to find out - neither of which are very time-nut related, but both are to some extent as they they involve measuring the phase difference between two signals. 1) There was some work done somewhere (I believe an Australian lab), which showed that calibrating a VNA with 1/8 and 3/8 offset shorts is superior to a flush short and 1/4 spacer. Both give the desired 180 degree difference in reflected signal, so at first thought they are equivalent. I do know the reason the 1/8 and 3/8 are superior, but I'd like to find a reference. 2) Who in Australia would be best at measuring the reflection coefficient of a 50 Ohm termination? -- Dr. David Kirkby G8WRB http://www.vnacalibration.co.uk/ Economical & accurate VNA calibration kits. Coefficients available for HP, Agilent, Anritsu, Rohde & Schwarz and VNWA network analyzers. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.