[time-nuts] frequency reference for portable operation

[Rex]

On 3/10/2013 6:10 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
> rexa at sonic.net said:
>> or if you have a beacon in range that you can find to establish your
>> offset.
> What do you do after you determine the offset?
>
> Do you tweak it out with a trimmer (R or C)?  Or tell the software?  Or do
> the corrections with pencil and paper?
>
>

The typical rig would use a 2 meter radio as the low end transceiver. 
The microwave radio usually would be set up so that 10368 MHz would tune 
down to 144 MHz on the "IF" radio. So if you tune a beacon that you 
expect to be at 10368.300 and find it at 144.301, you now know your 
radio tunes 1 kHz high so you transmit and listen 1 kHz high vs the 
dial. Or you could go, "1 KHz isn't a lot", so just ignore it and assume 
the other more experienced operators will figure it out. After a couple 
contacts I usually figure out that I should listen for another 
particular station with a certain offset. More complicated, a certain 
station may have an offset of xxx Hz between Tx and Rx. I hate that 
because my IF radio is a pain to tune RIT (receive vs Tx offset) so it 
is hard for me to correct and we wind up chasing each other. up or down 
the band between tx/rx iterations.