[time-nuts] Boeing 787 GPS reception trouble

Chuck Harris cfharris at erols.com
Tue Jun 3 11:30:50 EDT 2014


Jim Lux wrote:
...
> makes an interesting point that a number calculated back in the 60s (orders of
> magnitude too high) has achieved urban legend status.

The correlations I was mentioning were for amateur measured fluxes while
flying at about 40,000 ft.

One thing worth mentioning is that all methods of measuring radioactive
fluxes are not equal.  The ubiquitous G-M tube is made in a myriad of different
configurations whose abilities range from measuring only very hard gamma
rays to softish Xrays in the 10KeV range.  And some G-M tubes have capability
of making very misleading measurements of alpha and beta particles in addition
to gamma.

And then there is the scintillation type of meter, which uses a material that
fluoresces on exposure to whatever particle, or energy level, that is interesting
to its maker.

I have measured numerous sources using a variety of different G-M tubes and
scintillation counters, and the "differences of opinion" the different counters
have is rather wide.

My Victoreen 425-110, made for 10KeV gamma and above, but not beta or alpha
is a real ninny, and thinks everything is drastically hot... But then it was
made for use by the medical community in their nuclear medicine and x-ray
exposure tests...  My various PDR-27's, on the other hand, aren't too impressed
with much of anything.  Kind of what you might expect from counters that were
meant for use by military folk that had to go into suspicious areas regardless
of the risk.

I'm not sure what sort of G-M counters were being used for TVB's test, and
for the others that have shown up on the web... It is probable that the
users of these counters were not all that sure themselves.

I am pretty sure, however, that this branch of TVB's thread has left the cover
of the time-nuts charter...

-Chuck Harris


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