[time-nuts] Any thoughts on best rubidium?

Will Matney xformer at citynet.net
Wed Jul 13 16:18:57 UTC 2011


David,

That's not a bad price for two in good shape. They generally supply the
connector with these, with the leads cut off at about 2 inches long. I just
stripped them, and soldered new leads to them, and then used heat-shrink
over the joints. After I got mine up and running, I calibrated it with my
GPS referenced HP 5328B counter. Mine works fine, and I've had no problems
with it. It was a pull on a PC board, like I mentioned earlier. Also, if
you mount them in a good aluminum chassis, the chassis is enough for a
heatsink, or so it seems on mine. All that's really in mine is the
oscillator and a power supply, which is housed in an aluminum enclosure
made with about a 0.060" thick aluminum sheet.

What I'm intending on doing, is making some rental calibration reference's
like this, and renting them from eBay, or off the website I'm starting this
fall. I'll calibrate them each time before sending them out. Amateur radio
folks, and the small shops can't afford the high prices of cal labs, most
of the time, and I'm doing this to save on the cost. After testing this
first design, and ironing out any bugs, I'm ready to start building the
first of these in about a month.

Best,

Will

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 7/13/2011 at 4:56 PM Dr. David Kirkby wrote:

>On 07/11/11 01:25 AM, Will Matney wrote:
>> David,
>>
>> The FE-5680A is always plentiful, and a lot of them are generally
mounted
>> on a PC board, from pulls, along with having a decent price. The main
thing
>> is availability, which means spare parts if you need them. I also know
that
>> I've seen these used as internal timebases for counters before on the
>> larger HP types.
>
>I decided to get the  FE-5680A in the end. I found a seller willing to
accept 
>£75 (~$120) for a pair of them shipped to my house in the UK. At $60
each 
>(including shipping), I thought that was a fair price.
>
>If at a later date I decide I want something with higher performance, I'll

>reevaluate the situation.
>
>I don't have a need for high absolute accuracy, but I'd like to have
something 
>better than an HP10811A (or similar) that has not been calibrated for a
decade 
>or two.
>
>I've got a Kenwood TS-940S transceiver with the rare SO-1 TCXO installed. 
>According to the spectrum analyser, that is about 40 Hz off, but I've no
idea 
>how much of that difference is due to the transceiver or HP10811A
oscillator in 
>the analyser. Logic would suggest the oven should be better, but that has
not 
>been calibrated for years, so the crystal has no doubt aged.
>
>A non-disiplied rubidium is not state of the art, but I'd feel comfortable
in 
>setting both the transceivers TCXO and the analyser's OCXO to the
rubidium.
>
>
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