[time-nuts] Re: PCTEL Timing Antenna with integrated GPS Receiver?

[Douglas Baker]

Hi John,

I am trying to figure what the advantage is for an antenna with the
built-in GPS receiver is.  This was the approach many years ago when low
noise/high gain pre-amps were not available.  Today, the good LNA's are
cheap and work great.  Plus this limits the use to just one user end
application.  With the standard GPS antenna & LNA you can use a 4-port (or
more) splitter and distribute the signal to several receivers.  And the
cost of 8-conductor cable is probably more expensive than good LMR coax for
the same length of run.  And if you have a long run you would have to use
RS422 instead of RS232 for a reliable setup.

Pctel is a good company and they have done well with the timing antenna
design that they took over from Micro Pulse.  But I just don't think this
will be a big seller for them. The only possible reason I can come up with
to go this route would be that you have a lot of RFI in the lab or wherever
and need to remote the receiver away from the RFI source.  And even then
that's not a guarantee!

73's
Doug Baker

On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 7:35 PM John Miller via time-nuts <
time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
> I was browsing around looking at surplussed reference antennas, like you
> do, and I stumbled across something really interesting and impulse bought
> it because it was cheap enough. It’s a PCTEL GPS-TMG-RCVR232-NLM - the 232
> in the model name may catch your eye. Before reading the model number, what
> got me was the connector on the bottom - not N or TNC like you may expect,
> but a large aviation-style 8 pin DIN connector.
>
> I found a spec sheet here:
> https://www.winncom.com/pdf/PCTel_GPS_TMG_RCVR/PCTel_GPS-TMG-RCVR_Series.pdf
> <
> https://www.winncom.com/pdf/PCTel_GPS_TMG_RCVR/PCTel_GPS-TMG-RCVR_Series.pdf
> >
>
> Nothing too impressive, but it looks neat to me. As long as it doesn’t
> have leap second issues, I’m going to incorporate it into the rest of my
> stack.
>
> Has anyone ever used one of these before? Any familiarity?
>
> Regards,
> John
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