[time-nuts] Active antennas for a Thunderbolt...

Chuck Harris cfharris at erols.com
Mon Jul 30 14:54:22 UTC 2012


Hi Brooke,

Lots of nice information, but I already have most of it.  The question
left unanswered is: Is it usually that hard to find a good working
active antenna that works with the TB?  Thus far, I have several hockey
puck antennas that work fine... albeit a bit deafly, as would be
expected.. and two bullet antennas that don't work at all.

I suspect that I have just had the bad luck to buy two bad antennas,
but I am naturally curious what happens when the sample set gets
larger.

Are a high percentage of the used bullet antennas dead?

-Chuck Harris

Brooke Clarke wrote:
> Hi Chuck:
>
> See:
> http://www.prc68.com/I/ThunderBolt.shtml#Ant
>
> Have Fun,
>
> Brooke Clarke
> http://www.PRC68.com
> http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html
>
> Chuck Harris wrote:
>> Ok, I'm getting a little puzzled.  I have a TB that came from one of
>> the early groups sold by John Ackermann and TVB as part of the TAPR buy.
>> It works nicely, but like all TB's, it is deaf as a post, and needs a
>> high gain antenna.... When I first got the TB, I tried it with a Motorola
>> hockey puck antenna, with about 17db gain, and if it is outside in the
>> clear, it works nicely... but LH shows the satellites signals are all
>> down in the mud.
>>
>> ...So...
>>
>> I bought the active antenna that the TB data sheet said belonged with
>> the TB, a 24045-10 bullet antenna, and *NO* satellites are visible..
>> the antenna is dead.
>>
>> I'm no stranger to getting cheated on things I buy, so I chalked it up
>> to bad luck, and put my Motorola hockey puck antenna back on my TB.
>>
>> ...Then....
>>
>> A couple of days ago another active antenna became available, a
>> Micro Pulse 1934NW/C 50db antenna from a DATUM INC GPSDO.  I checked
>> its data sheet, and it powers off of +5V @ 38ma, so I bought it,
>> hooked it up to my TB, and again *NO* satellites are visible... the
>> antenna is dead.
>>
>> I put a "T" in the line, and the voltage heading up to the antenna is
>> around +4.5V... The spec sheet says it will work down to +3V.
>>
>> Am I doing something wrong here?  Or am I just unlucky?
>>
>> -Chuck Harris
>>
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>
>
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