[time-nuts] HP 5065A owners, a question!

[John Ackermann N8UR]

 IIRC, there's a description in the 5065A manual about how to restore
the lamp if this happens, but I think the mechanism tends to occur
during long periods of storage, not during operation.

The small telco Rb's certainly have the flooding problem and there the
restoral methods are a bit more ad hoc.

John
----

On 10/24/19 5:27 PM, Charles Steinmetz wrote:
> John wrote:
> 
>> The 5065A is a Rubidium standard and unlike Cesium units it doesn't
>> have a "wear out" mechanism.  With a little TLC they can run
>> indefinitely.
> 
> We have heard a lot about vaporized Rb plating (condensing) out on the
> cooler spots of the envelope, and the need to refurbish tubes by heating
> the envelope to encourage the Rb to condense back to its original
> position to keep the physics package running.
> 
> All of the discussion I recall pertained to the small-cell telecom Rb
> units, but I may have missed posts about refurbishing 5065A Rb cells. Is
> the 5065A free from this mode of deterioration, and/or is there a
> similar fix for them?  (I could easily imagine that it takes a much
> longer time for a large Rb cell to show degradation from this cause.)
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Charles
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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.