[time-nuts] GPS antennas

lstoskopf at cox.net lstoskopf at cox.net
Sun Mar 10 04:53:46 UTC 2013


I purchased several of the Larson GPS antennas on eBay.  Various sites have several different specs so I opened one.  Since they were advertised as Timing Antennas I hoped to find some scalar rings or such.

Inside was a nice plated board with gold looking plated traces, a dual pole ceramic filter, a MaCom MAALSS0042 chip amplifier and a ceramic antenna.  The data sheet for the LNA indicates 5V supply with max 10V and typ. 1.15 NF.  This is the 27 dB gain version.  So that ceramic filter must have nearly a dB loss.

The 19 dB version is supposed to work at lower V and have a slightly higher NF..  I don't have one to open.

So no wonderful stuff inside.  A $3 IC, etc.  No worry about getting the enclosure together as it seems made to pull apart.

Guess I need to configure the LEA-4T and -6T to use 5V to the antenna rather than the default 3.3.

Those antennas have pretty high NF compared to the recommendations for use with the new GPS modules, but really are well built.

N0UU





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