[time-nuts] Phase measurement of my GPSDO

[Bob kb8tq]

Hi

The whole “volume of clutter” on the desk / bench / around the lab / basement 
is one of the many drivers getting me to move over to some of the more 
modern USB based measurement gear. You can swap out 400 lb of cranky 
(but useful )  gear from the 1960’s for what would fit in a small backpack. 

Even at work, the same sort of drivers applied. A USB based box was something 
that you could have a dozen of out on many benches. The big beast setup hulked 
away on it’s own bench over in the corner. A lot more got done with the little boxes.

There are a lot of grades of USB gear. I’m not suggesting that my $100 network 
analyzer competes for accuracy with a shiny new R&S or Keysight device. It just
*might* do as good a job as the broken down pile of gear from 1968 though. For 
a bit more than $100, I could get a better USB version ….

=====

Can you build your own TICC / scope / network analyzer / PC / television? 
Sure you can. It’s just parts put together in this or that fashion. Getting one to the
point that it measures up with what you can buy will take a while (likely a couple
of passes). 

Your time is “free" since this is a hobby. Does that really include 40 hours a week 
for a year to get this or that pass done? At least to me … nope. How about the lab 
full of application specific test gear to get this piece of gear debugged *before* you
can use it ? Hmmm….

Simply getting the board laid out is the easy part of any of this. On a normal 
product design, the work to get to that point is maybe 10% of the effort put in
to get the job done. A home project may be even more lopsided since it likely
is the first time you have done this or that. 

Lots of twists and turns. Lots of projects started and never fully completed. 
I have piles and piles of them ….

Bob

> On Apr 14, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Tobias Pluess <tpluess at ieee.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bob
> yes sure I know. At least my homebrew GPSDO and the STAR4 GPSDO I have are
> always powered, but since they don't take much space on my desk that's
> okay. But for the signal generators (or SpecAn etc) it is a completely
> different story; I usually take them from the shelf when I need them and
> put them back afterwards, because they simply take too much space away. And
> my home lab has only limited space, unfortunately. I am thinking since
> months about a better setup (how arrange everything, how to stack my
> equipment and such) but it is not so easy because simply stacking all
> equipment on top of each other is unsatisfactory (in that case one needs in
> general the instrument at the very top, which is simply too far away :-)).
> The 8663A is a nice machine, but it would fill my desk already by 50%, so
> no way to leave it there (and therefore I cannot keep it powered).
> 
> Tobias
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 1:54 PM Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>> 
>>> On Apr 14, 2020, at 2:31 AM, Tobias Pluess <tpluess at ieee.org> wrote:
>>>