[time-nuts] homebrew H maser

[J. Forster]

If you took a "modern" approach by using factory built test equipment as
building blocks (microwave synthesizer, lock-in amp, power supplies, etc)
and commercial vacuum components (pumps, valves, fittings, controllers,
etc. in Conflat or something like it), you could likely build up most of a
system pretty easily.

You could probably even build much of the specialized stuff from the
"Meccano" like vacuum parts made by Kimball Physics.

Much of this stuff is available on eBay at pretty reasonable prices.

In thinking about it, it would be a terrific project to run with LabView!

PLEASE! Don't tempt me further!!

Best,

-John

=================



> In message <4C7A6B01.3030908 at rubidium.dyndns.org>, Magnus Danielson
> writes:
>>On 08/29/2010 03:55 PM, Attila Kinali wrote:
>
>>It's a complicated field and several traps to fall into on the way. It
>>is a fairly sizeable project to attempt.
>
> Well, as with so much else, it depends what the level of ambition is.
>
> If you just want to be able to point to the resonance and say "I
> did that", it is not intrinsically hard and none of the materials
> are hard to get hold of or particularly poisonous.
>
> Few of the problems Ramsey fought in the early 1950'ies are relevante
> today, for instance, the entire detection issue is trivially solved
> with USRP/GnuRadio.
>
> I would tend to think that $10k in materials would get you pretty
> close.
>
> I think the most recent H-maser design is Neuchatels design for
> the Galileo GNSS.
>
> Building a _good_ (ie: metrology grade) hydrogen maser, sounds like
> the last significant thing you did in your life, however many years
> you have left...
>
> Poul-Henning
>
> PS: And if you even manage to build something which works half the
> time, and do not suffer from ethics, there is a finite but very
> profitable market for audiopholery, and I'm sure somebody is willing
> to eliminate the last traces of jitter in his CD-player for just
> under $100k...
>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by
> incompetence.
>
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