[Today’s run: 1.4 miles]
I was a bit under the weather yesterday. After the email and morning rush was over I called in for a sick day and just loafed around the rest of the day.
I played with the GPSDO some more. I discovered that my +/- 5 VDC supply was broken. I clip-wired two bench supplies to cover that need. And I discovered that the thing really wasn’t running right otherwise either. I eventually concluded that I need to use shielded wire in the 10 MHz delivery from the controller card to the back panel. So I put those in. And I built a little two-transistor switch/amp to boost the 3 volt 1-pps signal from the GPS up to 5 volts.
Between those two things, today it is working much better. I had to do a bit of a tweak to the screwdriver coarse-adjuster thing. Over the course of the day it has been syncing the oscillator and the GPS and it looks great, running right near the center of the control voltage swing.
So now I need to build a small bi-polar power supply and remake the GPS connector board to include the little amp. When I get those things done I can put the lid on and the rest should just be software tweaks.
I’m glad I have it working this far, very pleased with what I’m seeing.