[time-nuts] Newbie questions

[John Miles]

>
> Nope, not ready to run away by any means, John!  And I do thank you
> much for your time in these helpful comments.  Thanks also to Tom for
> that somewhat different scope method.  I was indeed wondering about
> that short-term stability issue  when making quick "point-in-time"
> frequency measurements.  You have clarified my thinking on this.  My
> conclusion now is that there is not much point in trying to adjust
> the LPRO to the TBolt frequency when the difference, as now, is only
> 0.001 or 0.002 Hz  I should just probably make comparisons once in a
> while to check the LPRO for aging rate, etc.
>
> But what about making comparisons with the counter using very long
> gate times, such as 1000 seconds.  Wouldn't that make things more
> accurate.  Or would I still be limited by the counter (obviously I am
> still limited by the number of digits being displayed).

You can use long gate times to measure long-term frequency differences, as
long as the counter has enough "storage" to accumulate that many cycles.  At
some point you may find that increasing the gate time doesn't give you any
more digits of precision.  Unfortunately I'm totally unfamiliar with the
5335A so can't say offhand what the best settings would be.

-- john, KE5FX