Very nice report, Corby! When I was in grad school back in the 90's, doing vacuum pump work was a very menial task usually assigned to grad students, so naturally I became quite familiar with it :-). Especially cleaning up messes with decrepit old experimental systems!
I think back to those days and maintaining an already-functioning H-Maser actually seems perfectly feasible in the long term. The tight geometry of the copper package of a H-Maser sure seems a lot more feasible than the other atomic clocks which are way more hi-tech stuff. That said, machining the copper would be way beyond my ability! I also did get to work some plasma physics experiments where we used kettles - literally large industrial cooking kettles, with some hacked-in brazed-shut machining for the various probes and plumbing. Maybe if there was some way to homebrew a primitive H-Maser with that low level of construction competence I could give it a try! Please share more tales/pics of your H-Maser experience! Tim N3QE On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 1:18 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Happy Birthday EFOS2 Maser! > > The EFOS2 active hydrogen Maser at my place just turned 34 years old! > Pretty impressive reliability. > It is an Oscilloquartz Maser, they are now called T4 Science. > I know a guy in Norway that bought the refurbished EFOS3 Maser last > year directly from T4 Science! It is 32 Years old! > I have had the EFOS2 running here pretty much continuously since > Sept 2007. > I've had to refill the Hydrogen bottle 3 times. > replaced ion pumps 4 times (requires a CLEAN vacuum pumping system) > Had to repair one of the ion pump supplies (bad capacitor) > Also removed original 1 transistor power oscillator that was used to > drive the discharge providing the atomic Hydrogen. > I replaced it with a custom class A oscillator amplifier. > It uses an Oscilloquartz B5400 Quartz oscillator that has aged very > little since 2007! > > Cheers, > > Corby Dawson > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > _______________________________________________ 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.
