[time-nuts] Active antennas for a Thunderbolt...

[WarrenS]

Have you used Lady Heather to automatically set the Default settings?

To allow the Tbolt to work with weak signals from any antenna that I've 
tried, even when indoors,
I start by setting the TBolt's AMU level from the default of 4 down to 0.
This can be done with the Tbolt S/W or LH.

My general AMU setting goal is to make it low enough so that the TB is 
always using a minimum of three satellites.
If the TB ever does goes into holdover, that should be fixed, because that 
will cause some serious freq offset noise at the TBolt's output,
The usual holdover fix is to give the antenna a better view of the sky 
and/or  lower the TBolts AMU setting.
It is better to set the AMU too low which will allow it to use weak signals 
all the time than it is to set it too high and have No signals even for a 
short time.

After lowering the AMU value, if you want to optimize the setting, LH has 
all kinds of tools to help, such as the sat signal strength plot.

ws

******************
 cfharris at erols.com said:
>> I suspect that I have just had the bad luck to buy two bad antennas, but 
>> I
>> am naturally curious what happens when the sample set gets larger.

>I have 2 TBolts using the small Motorola antenna from TAPR in a not-good
>location.  The sheet says 24 dB of gain.  I have 6 or 9 or ?? feet of RG-6.

>They work as expected, that is they work, but not well.  The holdover logic
>gets tested frequently and surveys take a long time.  But they do work.