[time-nuts] Z3801A

[SAIDJACK at aol.com]

Mark, John, Bill, Tom,
 
I received a number of off-line emails from you about the new Jackson-Labs  
Fury GPSDO, thanks much for your interest! Let me try to address all of your  
questions here, please excuse the long email. 
 
I am loosely associated with Jackson-Labs - it carries my name :)
 
The Fury GPSDO is going through it's final stages of software development,  
the hardware has stabilized about two months ago and not changed since. We have 
 about 10 units available from stock at this point. We are thinking of  
offering these to Time-Nuts members at a preferred price until sold  out.
 
The time-nuts special pricing we can offer is $750 for the single-oven  
AT-cut, and $1050 for the double-oven SC-cut OCXO both in single piece  quantities. 
This includes a Trimble GPS antenna and the Fury PCB. Software  upgrades will 
be available on our Website for free download. The next batch  of Fury's will 
be inside metal enclosures, and will be more expensive.
 
My personal recommendation is the double-oven SC-cut unit, the OCXO is so  
good that it virtually does not require any electronic temperature compensation  
(spec is 6.7E-012 per degree Celcius)! The single-oven OCXO unit is  
recommended to be operated in some form of enclosure.
 
The software interface uses a subset of the HP/Symmetricom 58503B  SCPI 
interface commands, which follows the SCPI Standard Version 1994.0. We  added a 
number of propriatary commands to access and change loop control  parameters, as 
well as OCXO current, temperature, UTC offset etc.
 
The direct access to loop parameters such as IIR filtering, PI control,  
Aging, Tempco, OCXO-temp. and current, etc as well as logging of capture  
parameters to .txt files should allow Time-Nuts months of  experimentation! Logged 
data such as OCXO temperature versus EFC-DAC etc can be  directly viewed with 
Ulrich Bangerts fantastic plotter program.
 
The remaining software development effort is focussing on achieving 100%  
compatibility with SatStat, and GSPCon, this has not quite finished yet,  but the 
units' can be easily firmware-upgraded in the field via the serial port  
later.
 
Here are the key features that separate the Fury from the competition in  our 
opinion:
 
   * only <4.5W at 12V needed, allows simple Pb Battery  backup
   * No spurs visible in phase plot when checking with TSC5120A;  <-155dBc 
phase noise >1KHz
   * M12+ receiver, and double oven SC-cut OCXO for around  $1K new small qty
   * No need for thermal insulation with Double Oven OCXO
   * Significantly better phase noise, ADEV, Power consumption  etc than 
58503B
   * 32-bit, 58Mips RISC processor running extremely fast  RTOS
   * Sine Wave as well as CMOS outputs available in  parallel
   * Access to internal loop parameters and easy  data logging of capture 
results for stability tweaking and  experimentation.
   * Alarm output. 1PPS output from either raw GPS or OCXO. 1PPS  output can 
be set +-10us to UTC in 1ns steps
   * Configurable  serial port 9600 - 115200 Baud.  Secondary serial port 
allows full access to M12+ receiver via WinOncore12
   * Two LCD and keypad options (16x2, or 20x4 LCD), 1 or 5  key's, or fully 
controlled via serial port
 
Please send us your suggestions for product features or improvements! We  
would love to get feedback.
Bye,
Said