[time-nuts] Voyager space probe question

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 30.11.20 um 07:00 schrieb Mark Sims:
> I once bought a spool of tungsten-rhenium alloy wire on ebay for dirt 
> cheap. A few weeks later a guy contacted me and offered a lot of money 
> for it. Turns out they used it to rebuild TWTs. 

1. I used to live in Ulm, Germany, where there was? Thales TWT production.
My neighbor and fellow ham worked there, so I got an invitation for their
family-open-house day. That was most interesting. One division looked so
much like a mechanical craft shop: glass blowing, milling, electrical
discharge machining, welding, all so ...retro. And then, the next room:
An array of the best and newest vector network analyzers, with ladies
moving magnets to collimate the beam and maximizing S21.
But I don't think they can survive the GaN revolution.

2. @ Jim:  Is there a canonical way to couple a varactor etc to the
DRO for locking without killing Q or without having any effect?
I have made some experiments with 3D-electromagnetics but did
not get very far. It's not for the casual user.

Mechanical vibration is probably not an issue for our electron spin
DRO.   :-)   It weighs more than 3 Kg, most of it iron to support the
DC field magnets. Looks good. I'd like to get one for the mantlepiece.
Our puck has a borehole for a tiny glass pipe through it to apply
the solution with the free radicals.  Q takes a hit but there is
still enough left. We get quite a frequency shift when changing
the uMol concentration. Can't tell numbers.

Cheers, Gerhard