Comments and critique are welcome and encouraged. Input for the actual paper from HAMS and / or time-nuts regarding current projects will be much appreciated. Time-nuts members might wish share personal anecdotes of how they got started being a time-nut, or got started working with WWVB, GPS, or GPSDO. Some of the old timers may remember the Shera project and can share comments about it.
I'd like to have inputs by this Thursday for final abstract submission deadline on Friday 1 January 2016. Presentation is in Albuquerque, NM on February 27, 2016. DRAFT-DRAFT-DRAFT A High Quality Time and Frequency Laboratory on a Budget By S. Cash Olsen KD5SSJ Following a brief retrospective look at time synchronization and frequency syntonization by various methods, this paper will recall the seminal publication of Brooks Shera W5OJM (SK) in QST magazine in 1998 which introduced many amateurs to time and frequency measurement based on the Global Positioning System (GPS). Low cost and high quality GNSS (Global Navigational Satellite System, the USA DoD subset is GPS and will be used generically in this paper) receivers have spawned many recent and current projects by HAMS, world wide, to discipline both quartz and atomic (rubidium) oscillators. With amateur projects as varied as weak signals (such as QRSS, WSJT, EME) and microwave mountain topping to synthetic aperture and steered arrays of antennas, frequency coordination and time synchronization are of great importance to many Amateur Radio enthusiasts. This paper will offer technical insight into the methods and techniques for equipping a very high quality time and frequency laboratory on an amateur's budget, approximately the cost of a used transceiver. Attention will be given to the distinction between frequency (FLL) and phase (PLL) lock loops, sawtooth correction of 1PPS signal from GPS, distribution of reference oscillators and timing signals, Four Channel Dual Mixing methods, Time Interval Counters, as well as, tips and tricks to maintain high accuracy in measurements. Briefly, I will show how this subject speaks directly to the charter of the Amateur Radio Service, Part 97.1 (b)(c)(d)(e). DRAFT-DRAFT-DRAFT -- S. Cash Olsen KD5SSJ ARRL Technical Specialist _______________________________________________ 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.
