[time-nuts] Upgrading old Thunderbolt?

WarrenS warrensjmail-one at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 25 00:15:00 UTC 2010


David

It would be worth while to first see what is wrong, if anything, with what 
you now have.
More important than the Osc, is the Tbolt's settings.
The default ones are more optimized to work with poor Oscillators.
Consider that the Tbolt's default settings will make a poor Osc Good and 
will make a good Osc perform poorly.
What that means is there will be little or no difference in the end results, 
when changing even to the best possible Osc,
IF you are still using the factory defaults settings.

So first insure that your Tbolt system is set up as good as possible,
which includes the antenna, the environment, the Power supply, and the 
settings.

If you'll save a 24 hr log plot using Lady Heather's "wa" command,
a person that is experienced analyzing these plots,
can tell you if your Osc is limiting the Tbolt's performance.
Attached is an example

ws

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[time-nuts] Upgrading old Thunderbolt?
David Martindale dave.martindale at gmail.com
Fri Sep 24 19:49:13 UTC 2010

Suppose I have an old Thunderbolt that works, but has the old Piezo
OCXO.  Is it feasible to upgrade it "in place" by obtaining one of the
newer Trimble oscillators from somewhere (or something equally good
that fits mechanically)?  Does the Trimble OCXO need different
operating parameters than the Piezo one (e.g. gain)?

(I have seen John Miles' page
http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx/tbolt.htm  that describes replacing the
old OCXO with a HP 10811.  But that won't fit in the original case and
requires an extra power supply voltage.  If I need to buy a better
OCXO anyway, why not one that fits the available space and operates
from the available power?)

Or would it just make sense to buy a more recent Thunderbolt for $200?

     Dave 
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