[time-nuts] Oscilloquartz 3210 Cesium Standard

Chris syseng.greenfield at btconnect.com
Fri Sep 5 12:10:56 EDT 2014


Hi Tom,

Just catching up and time for an update on progress. Had had to put the 
faulty 3210 to one side this week to get some work done, but a couple of 
developments meantime: First: Put an enquiry on the Oscilloquartz web 
enquiry form a week or so ago and they sent me the full 3210 pdf manual. 
Theory, adjustments and full schematics. Needless to say very grateful 
and sent back an email thanking them. Although there were no conditions 
attached, I have to assume it was sent in confidence, so can't upload to 
a file share site, but if anyone needs a copy, please contact me off 
list. Thanks to Tom for scanning his manual as well. It looks like an 
earlier version than I have and there seem to be minor differences, so a 
scan of the whole thing would be good, if possible. I have a Panasonic 
doc scanner, A4 A3, long and user defined pages, colour etc (Ebay, 20 
ukp :-) and could scan the whole volume if you are in the UK. Second: I 
had a possible line on two more of these 3210's and offer accepted, 
collected them yesterday. One blows the line fuse, which should be 
simple fix, but the other one actually works. Ion current way off scale 
to start, with one psu rail cycling on and off, but after an hour or 
two, lock light on and integrator starting to fall back as the OCXO 
warmed up. The 2nd harmonic, which was zero on the original unit, 
started creeping up from just visible indication, to 4 of 10 after ~5 
hours, then after running all night, shows full scale at 10, Utopia :-). 
Valid range from the manual is 2-10, so this looks like a very good 
tube. Am going to leave it running for a month, then go right through 
the setup procedure.

Both units collected yesterday were each in a small subrack, with Racal 
badged standbye psu + batteries and the whole rack marked as "Portable 
Frequency Standard". That is, take to a site, power up, calibrate 
whatever, then power down and put back in store. They may have done very 
few hours, but that may be wishful thinking. Two still to fix then, but 
now have a working unit for comparison and at last, a properly working 
cesium standard for the lab. Thanks to everyone who replied here along 
the way, the response and encouragement have been amazing...

Regards,

Chris

cc this to tvb, in case this doesn't reach the list...


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