[time-nuts] Strange oscillations

Jeffrey Pawlan jpawlan at pawlan.com
Sat Sep 4 19:41:10 EDT 2004


Bill wrote:

> Too bad, I was going to suggest gravity waves and ask if the
> magnitude of the oscillation changed with orientation of the
> unit's case.


   The very first attempt I made at designing a precision frequency
standard myself, I found out that it is true that the orientation of the crystal
relative to gravity is VERY significant.  I was working at that time in a
company that owned a labratory rubidium standard. I compared my 10MHz output
against the Rb simply using an oscilloscope and looking at the resulting
lissajous pattern. I was shocked to see the phase move and even rotate
beyond 1Hz difference with the orientation of my oscillator. I was using a
crystal made by International Crystal, AT cut, and made as high a precision as
they could supply.






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