[time-nuts] Need some wisdom from the cesium beam tube gurus out there
Bob Camp
kb8tq at n1k.org
Thu Nov 10 00:13:57 UTC 2016
Hi
I would bet that they started as you have with a low oven setting and cranked
it up based on stability data. Once they got to that point, add a bit to have enough
margin on the tube for it to last the rated life.
Since there are multiple quantum “modes” the beam can get into, there may have been a bit of
sweeping involved to keep this separated from that. If so, I suspect that the sweep
procedure is long lost. You are pretty much stuck with the stability check / tweak / stability
check approach.
Bob
> On Nov 9, 2016, at 7:02 PM, Skip Withrow <skip.withrow at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Time-Nuts,
>
> I have been checking out some cesium beam tubes lately and have run into an
> interesting one. The tube is a standard HP 05061-6077 unit. There are two
> labels on these tubes, one at the end that has a serial number, and the
> other large label on the side that has the operating information (and the
> serial number). Problem with this tube is the large label is completely
> BLANK. It appears that there was never any information on this label. The
> source that it came from was pretty closely connected to HP, so it could be
> a tube that escaped before testing/characterization.
>
> The nice thing is that it works! Using some random nominal resistors for
> the oven temperature I get good beam current. Changing the electron
> multiplier voltage also dramatically changes the beam current. I see the 3
> peaks around the on-frequency point quite nicely.
>
> So, the question is - how do I determine the operating point of the tube
> with no data? I could fire up a known tube and set the beam current for
> the same value, but how would the oven temperature vs. electron multiplier
> voltage be resolved. I would think that a lower oven temp and higher EM
> voltage would give the same beam current as a higher oven temp and lower EM
> voltage.
>
> I'm sure the HP did not do any characterization of the tube until it was
> all buttoned up. So how did they determine the temperature of the oven?
> Just from the value of the internal thermistor?
>
> I suspect the answer is what kind of S/N ratio do I want? If that is the
> case then I would be tempted to run at the lowest oven temp and highest EM
> voltage that gave me a usable signal - for the sake of tube life.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
> Skip Withrow
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