[time-nuts] Lessons learned, Odetics 3/425

[Bruce Lane]

Fellow clock-confusers,

	I learned an important lesson today, while troubleshooting the GPS
receiver module in my Odetics clock for the 5th time. That lesson is
"Never assume that you've fixed an intermittent problem the first time."

	The second part of the lesson is "Never assume the most complicated
failures. It's the simple stuff that'll get you in the end."

	And, in this case, it was indeed very simple. The center pin of the
SMB-type antenna connector, on the GPS receiver board itself, had a
hairline fracture. I didn't discover this until I disassembled the thing
to work on it today, and found that the center pin was not only bent but
rotating freely around its center axis when I tried to straighten it.

	I have ordered the necessary connectors from Allied to allow me to
completely re-do the antenna cable from front to back, including
replacing the push-on SMB crap with proper (and far more durable) SMA
parts.

	This certainly explains why the thing has been intermittent since Day 1,
even though the pin seemed OK the last time I had it apart. What I can't
figure out is, given that the PCB outline on the receiver board is
clearly spaced for an SMA connection, why was an SMB put on there? Cost,
perhaps? Seems to me the SMB would actually be more expensive due to the
tolerances involved.

	Happy timing.