[time-nuts] CTS oscillator info?

Peter Loron peterl at standingwave.org
Tue Apr 7 20:10:26 UTC 2009


> I just bought an oscillator on ebay. Here's the basic description from
> the listing,
> "This is an auction for one CTS Knights 970-2162-0 (WP 93216-L1) 5MHz
> OCXO oscillator."
>
> It is a double oven and actually has a frequency of 5.000055 MHz on  
> the
> label, so 55 Hz above
> 5 MHz. I'm hoping it is a very clean source and will be good for  
> beating
> against other 5 MHz
> sources to measure them, but I haven't found any more info on this one
> with searches.
>
> Does anyone on the list have any guess what it might have been used
> with? I'm guessing it may be
> for some piece of measurement test equipment. Or does anyone have a  
> lead
> on specs for the
> quality of its output signal?
>
> The auction was 130297655960, if anyone wants to look at the pictures.
>
> thanks,
> Rex

Hello, group. The item Rex is referring to is one I sold to him. When  
I acquired the lot of OCXOs, I sent a mail to CTS, asking them for any  
information on them. They were able to supply me with the mechanical  
drawings, but the specs are proprietary as they were custom built for  
Lucent...likely embedded in some sort of comms equipment. I'm guessing  
that if they went to the expense of buying double-oven oscillators,  
they chose good specs for them.

I'm thinking of desoldering the adjustment screws on one of them to  
see if I can tune it to 5.000000 MHz, although that is probably in  
noise floor of my equipment.

For somebody (like me) who does not have a background in metrology and  
lacks any serious measuring equipment, is there a way to characterize  
items like this short of sending them to a lab?

Thanks.

-Pete



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