[time-nuts] My old new 53132A just arrived

[Bob Camp]

Hi

If you have been reading here for a while, you know that I would recommend a
Thunderbolt to just about anybody. They are cheap (for what they are) and
easy to find. My first suggestion would be a TBolt. 

Here's another approach:

Do you really need accuracy, or is stability good enough? If stability is
good enough, how stable for how long? A double oven crystal oscillator, kept
on power could give you 0.1 ppb / day stability and < 1 ppb / month. An LPRO
rubidium would do about the same day to day, but would get you to 0.01 ppb /
month. 

Either one of them could be calibrated by a short battery powered visit to a
friend who is running a TBolt or something similar. That would likely allow
accuracy of < 1 ppb with either device. The LPRO would hold the accuracy for
year or more. The OCXO would hold it for a month or more. 

At the other extreme: 

If you want to do instantaneous accurate and stable readings to the floor of
the 53132, then both approaches have some limits. The TBolt would have to be
in a very stable temperature environment to get close to the level the
counter is capable of. You would also need to tweak it's parameters a bit.
Accuracy would (obviously) be the issue with the free running sources. 

At the Time Nuts extreme:

You really need at least three if not five of every frequency standard known
to man, all in perfect working order .....

It all depends on what you need. 

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On
Behalf Of Loïc MOREAU
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2010 8:16 AM
To: time-nuts at febo.com
Subject: [time-nuts] My old new 53132A just arrived

Hi all,

My first goal is to verify the frequency of my different RF sources : 4420B,
some DDS, a N2PK VNA and  ISOTEMP 134-10, the next step with the help of an
Excel spread sheet to have some idea about their respective stability.

Equipped with option 010, I would like to know how in which direction to go
to calibrate my unit. The frequency of the internal time base is supposed to
be stable but I have no way to know the exact frequency as the unit is an
old one.

So I suppose I have to calibrate the gear with an external source, for now I
can suppose that my 53132A is accurate to 10-6  or +-1Hz, as it is so easy
to turn the front panel adjusting screw, I am not sure about the actual
precision.

I can take two possible direction to improve my system with an external time
base.   

1. acquire a rubidium 10Mhz, put in in a box with a 24V power supply 

Or 

2. acquire a 10Mhz GMS time unit or homebrew one with one of the numerous
project that we can find.

Can somebody give an advice : I have no clue to choose between the
solutions, apart the power drain of the first one. 

Regards
Loïc 

http://www.eai.fr




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