[time-nuts] measuring my GPSDO : length of TimeLab run?

[Chris Howard]

I took my recently acquired cesium clock to the hamfest
in Jackson, MS a couple of weeks ago in the hope that I could
cash in big and retire in splendor.  But no one bought it.

So, instead I spent some of my hamfest earnings on a GPIB/USB
dongle and I've been using TimeLab and looking at the
VE2ZAZ GPSDO that got me into all of this in the first place.

The numbers I get are very gratifying.  The GPSDO seems to work
better than I expected.  This is really cool.

But I have a question.

The GPSDO is set up to do a potential correction every hour.
It seems to me that a TimeLab run of less than X hours will
only be measuring the fine properties of the oscillator
and not the whole system.  The question is, how many
hours of data collection are needed to capture a
characterization of the GPSDO as a whole?

What do people to with Thunderbolts and other similar systems?


Chris Howard
w0ep

After I get done playing around with this cesium standard
I still think I would like to sell it.  I would like
to get enough out of it to buy an Elecraft K2 with some
of the options.  I don't really know if that is realistic.
If anyone has comments on that plan, would also love
to hear them.