[time-nuts] GPS failure...

Magnus Danielson cfmd at bredband.net
Mon Feb 6 15:43:09 EST 2006


Dear fellow time-nuts,

Today the little mystery of why we lost the GPS signal at work finally
explained itself. Hooking up my Z3801 instead of our normal house-clock did not
give any better result. So, today I finally said the antenna goes down for
inspection. I had been given the hint that it might have some humidity in it,
so I tossed it into one of our climate owens for a nice little steam-off.
Instead it proved to be a gentle defrozting action. There was not high
humidity, it was a whole little splash of water in there, you heard it as you
shaked it. That besides finding a spider in the lower-cap, it had eaten half
the o-ring on the outside and near the contact we also found its pray wound in.

So, de-bug your antenna before you find it full of wild-life and water-life as
we found. This antenna is now de-comissioned and a new is being ordered
tomorrow. We will also take the oppertunity to mount it better, possibly even
at a different localtion, but that will probably have to wait until spring, as
we now have a little snow-storm, not he best situation for walking the
rooftops.

Hope you learned something. We learned that we need to check the waterlevel in
the GPS antenna regularly. I will also hack up a continous logging system so I
can get warnings when the signal fades away. I need that at home too anyway.

Cheers,
Magnus




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