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Ham Radio other thoughts

This thing I bought

[Today’s run: rest day]

On another internet auction whim I recently put in a low-ball bid on a piece of equipment.  Wouldn’t you know it, I won.  Now I have to either go get the thing or pay to have it picked up and shipped to me.

(whaa  whaa  here comes the whaaambulance) 🙂

As you may know, I spent  over a year gathering the parts for a GPS disciplined oscillator, a 10 Mhz frequency standard. I got it all running last spring, wrestled with it off and on over the summer, and I just recently have gotten everything working in good shape.  Whew!

I am on the “time-nuts” mailing list which has a lot of people on it who are way over-the-top smart and crazy about time and frequency measurement.  Their running joke is that once you get one frequency standard you will soon want at least two more so as to measure the first one (and the third is to prove which of the first two are right).

This item that showed up in Ohio at a NASA facility is called an FTS-4060.  It is also a 10 Mhz frequency standard.  But this one is a genuine cesium-transition atomic clock.  Cool!

I wonder what my third will be?