[time-nuts] HP Stories: Frequency Counter business

[w4wj at aol.com]

I was spoiled...
I spent 3 years in Ethiopia, '65 - '68, with the ArmySecurity Agency.  Our shop looked like a TEK andHP Catalog!!  Our FREQ REF rack was the GSQ-53A,dual Sulzer 5MHz ovenized oscillators which we phase compared against GBR on 16KHz.
 
We ran the phase chart 24/7 to make sure we kept things stable!  The Sulzer oscillators were very impressive.  Very little tweaking was needed to keep the chart trackingdown the middle during light/light and dark/dark times!
As far as our counter was concerned...  It was thesweet HP 5245L, with a bunch of plug-ins takingus beyond 17GHz.
Whenever the "calibration" truck would come to oursite, we would feed our REF 5MHz out to them so theycould check their standard!  ;-)
We had a very large DMM, and they would check theirstandard cell with it!
It was a FUN time!!
73DonW4WJex ET3FMA


In a message dated 1/21/2019 4:02:55 PM Central Standard Time, dgminala at mediacombb.net writes:

More likely, the counter Neville used was the model 524B (see picture attached).  The 525 was a series of frequency converters that enabled the 524 counter to measure frequencies up to 500 MHz (Megacycles (Mc) in the vernacular of the time).Surely is good to learn about the beginnings of the HP culture and saddening to hear of the hard times that have befallen, but technology never stands still..

Dave M.
Gordon Batey wrote:> Greetings to all,>> I believe that was the HP 525 counter.  I had one as my first counter> which I picked up surplus many years ago.  It had several plug-ins for> different> frequency ranges.  Kept the basement warm in the winter time.  The vhf> plugin was a heterodyne mixer as I recall.  This unit ontained MANY> tubes> and a> fairly large fan to remove the heat.  I gave it to another ham> several years> ago.>>> I really enjoy the HP stories.>> Gordon Batey> WA4FJC>>>> Hi,> I used an HP counter in 1961 that had these vertical strings of neon> tubes> behind numbers, and the two least significant decimals were read off> two> milliamp meters numbered 0 to 10. For each count the needles would> point to> the number to be read. The whole instrument was a 2 foot cube that> sat on a> trolley.> After all this time I can not remember the model number. Our company> repaired Air force instruments and recalibration of frequency ?meters?> (calibrated heterodyne oscillators).> Cheers,> Neville Michie>>> _______________________________________________> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at lists.febo.com> To unsubscribe, go to> http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and> follow the instructions there.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When thegovernment fears the people, there is liberty -- Thomas Jefferson

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