[time-nuts] Looking for GPSDO for home use

[Tom Van Baak]

Dave,

If you're just calibrating a frequency counter you may not need a GPSDO. A simple GPS 1PPS is all you need; just measure the time from the 1PPS to the 10 MHz, wait a minute or an hour or a day and do it again. This will show you the time drift, from which you can calculate the frequency error.

Still, having a 10 MHz GPSDO available is usually more convenient, so I would not talk you out of it.

If you don't want to spend time to design your own GPSDO, or to build one of the dozen homebrew projects on the web, I would recommend you get a Trimble Thunderbolt. They are as turn-key as you can get, but also allow great hacking if you so choose.

I have some left over from the group buy. If you're interested contact me off-list.

Thanks,
/tvb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Feldman" <wb0gaz at yahoo.com>
To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 8:27 AM
Subject: [time-nuts] Looking for GPSDO for home use


> 
> I found this reflector after searching for GPSDO that would be suitable for individual purchase/use. Each time I found an article about GPSDO projects, that lead me to a surplus GPS module that is either no longer available, not current production, undocumented, or otherwise difficult to source. I don't mind doing my own building/integration, and am not adverse to starting with a used or suplus component, I'm not sure where to start in terms of sourcing the GPS module/antenna/etc. My main need is for something to serve as a primary frequency standard (i.e., 10 MHz output) I can use to set a voltage controlled OCXO I just installed in my (otherwise cheap chinese) frequency counter. It seems there are some modules that have/had 10 kHz output; that would work too. Even 1 PPS output seems like a workable starting point, but at the expense of a different and/or more difficult path to get to a 10 MHz reference signal I seek.
> 
> Any advance or pointer to source (reasonable cost, whatever that means!) would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Dave
> wb0gaz at yahoo.com
>