[time-nuts] What sort of oscillator is this?

Tom Miller tmiller11147 at verizon.net
Mon Sep 29 00:19:50 EDT 2014


The 70k SA should work fine. Just warm it up, set it for center freq. 
10.000000 MHz, span 5 or 10 kHz. Feed in the 10 MHz reference and power the 
cold 8720 up. If it comes up near centered in a few seconds and does not 
change much, you have a TCXO. If way off frequency and drifting towards 10 
MHz, it's an OCXO.

How is it that a time-nut does not have a counter? (just kidding).




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd)" 
<drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk>
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" 
<time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2014 9:43 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] What sort of oscillator is this?


> On 29 Sep 2014 02:05, "Tom Miller" <tmiller11147 at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> Dave, do you have access to a good counter?
>
> Not really.
>
> I have an HP 70000 modular measurement system,  which has all the bits for
> a 22 GHz spectrum analyzer. The analyzer has a frequency counter mode, but
> I have not written any software to grab data from it.
>
> However,  I once had a contract where I wrote some code to collect data
> from another HP 70000 system,  so it should be a fairly easy thing to do. 
> I
> am not sure how well it works as a frequency counter.
>
> I do have an 18 GHz counter, but it doesn't have a high stability
> oscillator,  has no GPIB and has an intermittent fault.
>
> The 70000 series has the optional high stability time base, which is
> definitely an oven. A red light comes up when the oven is cold.
>
> BTW, for the 70000 series you need to have the oven in order to lock the
> system to an external reference.  One of the options for the high 
> stability
> time base is to delete the oven. Strangly some eBay sellers have been 
> known
> to have both and ask more for the one which has the option which deletes
> the oven!
>
>> If so, you could profile the warm-up characteristic of the reference from
> a cold start.
>
> I will try to do that. It might take me a bit of time as I need to do some
> things that earn me money.  They are of somewhat higher priority!
>
> Dave
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