[time-nuts] Am I doing something wrong?

[Roger Rehr W3SZ]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the note!

I leave the Trimble Thunderbolt powered up all the time because since 
the last rollover in April it takes a long time to find the satellites 
and it doesn't give 10 MHz output until it has found the satellites for 
the first time, so none of my gear that is fed by it works until it has 
achieved satellite lock at least once after being powered up.  After 
that it will give (undisciplined) 10 MHz output when it loses 
satellites.  I don't know if that lack of initial output is normal or 
not, because before the last rollover it would find the satellites 
quickly, before I had the rest of the station ready to go so I never 
noticed.

The Thunderbolt had been up and running continuously, stuck in the 
power-up mode for well more that a week without progressing to normal 
mode when I decided today to power it down and restart it to see if it 
would then advance from power-up to normal mode.  It has been more than 
4 hours since I restarted it earlier today and it still is in power-up mode.

You are right that the DAC is consistently 0.  PPS error jumps around 
between -50 and +50 ns.  OSC error is consistently in the range of 
543000 to 548000 ppt.  I don't understand why is says "Discipline OK" 
when it isn't disciplining, given the DAC voltage of zero and the large 
oscillator error.

All of this is a recent development.  The last time I took a screen grab 
of Lady Heather, last October, all looked well as you can see in the 
screen grab from last October:

http://w3sz.com/LadyHeatherScreen.PNG

I was hoping that I had recently accidentally set some setting 
incorrectly and that this would therefore be an easy fix.  I guess that 
is not the case :(

Thanks again Bill and

73,

Roger
W3SZ

On 9/24/2019 3:10 PM, Bill Beam wrote:
> How long has unit been powered on?
>
> GPS looks ok but osc is not locked, osc error is high at 500K ppt,
> should be below 50ppt.  DAC shows no activity.
>
> Give it time (maybe an hour) to see if it goes from 'Power-up' to 'Normal"
>
>
>
> On Tue, 24 Sep 2019 13:32:18 -0400, Roger Rehr W3SZ wrote:
>
>> HI All,
>> I am wondering if I have set up my Trimble Thunderbolt wrong.
>> I have corrected for roll-over and everything looks good in Lady Heather
>> but the Thunderbolt stays in Power-up mode according to Lady Heather,
>> and is always "doing fixes" even though I have entered the lat and lon
>> for a fixed location.
>> According to Lady Heather Disciplining is OK, and of course the log
>> reflects this as well
>> #! new minor alarm state 0800:-  Tracking sats- -  Discipline OK- -  : at tow
>> 235167
>> You can see the situation from this screen grab of Lady Heather:
>> http://w3sz.com/TrimbleLadyHeather.PNG
>> Have I done something wrong in configuration, or is this consistent
>> Power-up mode and "doing fixes" notation the expected behavior?
>