[time-nuts] Long term storage of HP5065A Rb frequency standard

[Peter Bell]

Yeah, I just found the manual and read it - I remembered reading the
bit about connecting up those wires when you put the unit in storage,
but had forgotten (or never noticed) the bit about putting 1A through
it if the 2nd harmonic was excesssively low after storage.

The good thing is that it looks like if this has happened, it just
fails to lock rather than doing serious damage to the physics package
when you turn the power on, which was what I was worried about.  It
also removed my other worry - these units were being operated on 115V
400Hz, and I wasn't sure if this meant they had a special PSU, but
apparently the standard PSU is 40-440Hz.

Do you have any photographs of the inside of the physics package?  It
would be interesting to see what's inside even (or especially) if I
don;t have to take it apart myself.

I guess the first thing to do before I can do anything else with them
is to deal with the ~7000 mile air gap between where I left them and
where I am now :)

Regards,

Pete


On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:56 PM, paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Did look it up
> The supply is .1v or so at 100 ma. It drives the thermo electric device. I
> speculate it heats the bulb. That stops the flooding.
> There is a recovery procedure if the cell has flooded also.
> Regards
> Paul.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:05 AM, paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> One other comment.
>> I have taken the rb package apart for repair and shared that info.
>> I was very impressed with the quality and scale of everything.
>> I speculate 10 years can have problems but I bet it can be made to work
>> again.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:03 AM, paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes I would believe many know the answer.
>>> Its in the first few pages of the 5065 manual and you can get that at the
>>> several sites free.
>>> Its rb flooding as I recall. I remember the pix.
>>> It explained what it is and what to do. I think there was a recovery
>>> procedure.
>>> But do not recall the details.
>>> Regards
>>> Paul.
>>> WB8TSL
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 3:37 AM, Peter Bell <bell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It just occured to me that if anyone knew the answer to this, they
>>>> would likely be on this list.
>>>>
>>>> I remember that when you put the HP5065A into storage, you were
>>>> supposed to unplug a little cable from the Rb cell and wire it up to
>>>> an external power supply - does anyone know exactly what this did, why
>>>> is was necessary, and what the likely likely outcome is if these units
>>>> are stored for an extended period of time (> 10 years) in a fairly
>>>> uncontrolled environment (I.E. and attic) without doing this?
>>>>
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>>>
>>
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