[time-nuts] Lucent 40 dB Antenna

[Charles P. Steinmetz]

Chuck wrote:

>My Lucent antenna arrived today.
>
>Has anyone compared this antenna with the mushroom that
>came from China with the used Thunderbolts???

I have five GPS antennas -- a Garmin mag-mount puck designed for 
vehicular use, a Garmin marine mushroom, a Lucent "timing" antenna 
like yours, a Trimble Bullet 3 (the antenna specified by Trimble for 
use with the Tbolt), and an Aerotenna choke-ring survey 
antenna.  Deployed in the same location, they all give very similar 
signal reports from the Tbolt and track the same number of satellites 
(remember, the Tbolt reports the carrier/noise ratio, not raw signal 
strength, and c/n is closely correlated with the signal environment 
at the antenna location unless an antenna has way too little gain or 
a very noisy preamp).  This suggests that they all have sufficient 
gain and low enough noise to work properly with a Tbolt.

The one difference I observe is that the choke-ring antenna shows 
consistently less variability in its surveyed position, and lower 
deviation of both the 10 MHz and pps, than all of the others.  I 
assume that this is due to reduced multipath, but I have no way to verify it.

Best regards,

Charles