In a message dated 10/18/2006 12:26:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, kb7nie@arrl.net writes: The November QST has an announcement for the "2006 Frequency Measuring Test" ( www.arrl.org/w1aw/fmt - though the 2006 announcement has not made it to the website yet). The object is to determine as accurately as possible the carrier frequency of a signal sent from W1AW on the 160m, 80m and 40m bands. There will also be a signal sent from the west coast on the 40m band. A lot of time nuts are hams. Who plans on participating? Henry _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts Henry... The FMT is a must on my calendar!! 73, Don, W4WJ

I had planned to participate the last 2 years, but got distracted both times. Hopefully, this year will be the charm :-) I better have my GPS stabilized clock working by then (to drive the HP 3586A receiver, and the HP 3570A counter for the decoded audio), no more excuses... Interestingly, the HP 5370A measures the 10 MHz timebase of the 3586 as 10,000,000.010 Hz after warmup (0.1sec gate time), and without any adjustment. Both use 10811 crystal ovens (high stability option). I calibrated the 3586 against WWV earlier this year, which could only get me to within 0.1Hz anyhow) but I would be surprised if the 5370A (just purchased) has been calibrated in the last 10 years. Didier KO4BB W4wj@aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 10/18/2006 12:26:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, > kb7nie@arrl.net writes: > > The November QST has an announcement for the "2006 Frequency Measuring Test" > ( www.arrl.org/w1aw/fmt - though the 2006 announcement has not made it to > the website yet). The object is to determine as accurately as possible the > carrier frequency of a signal sent from W1AW on the 160m, 80m and 40m > bands. There will also be a signal sent from the west coast on the 40m > band. A lot of time nuts are hams. Who plans on participating? > > Henry >

I have participated the past few years mostly with the N8UR multi-op group. My setup is as follows: 1. Receiver: Icom IC-745 or the Yaesu FT-100D (I threatened to use a Hallicrafters SX-25 one year) 2. PC with sound card running DL4YHF's Spectrum Lab for the FFT work. The receiver audio feeds the soundcard so it can be displayed using Spectrum Lab 3. HP 8657A signal generator using external 10-MHz reference from GPS and Z3801 or Rubidium 10-MHz oscillator 4. Home made splitter connecting antenna, receiver, and signal generator 5. If multi-op a home made amplifier buffer is used ahead of the splitter to prevent my signal generator from back feeding the antenna system to the other participants. The process is to locate the W1AW signal on the receiver and Spectrum Lab waterfall display. I then bring the signal generator online and insert a carrier near the W1AW signal. I measure the difference between the signal generator audio tone and the W1AW audio tone as observed by Spectrum Lab. Spectrum Lab is setup to record a WAV file so I can post-process the data if needed. I also have Spectrum Lab set to output the readings to a text file. This way I can pull them into a spreadsheet to do the calculations and average the readings. Since I know the frequency of the signal generator I can calculate the carrier of W1AW using the difference in audio tone between my generator and W1AW. If they want us to measure an audio tone as last year the same setup applies. When doing the calculations you just have to remember if the receiver was in LSB or USB and which side of the W1AW signal the signal generator was on. I participated last year but ended up messing up the data files so I did not make a submission. In the tests I participated my readings were within the same range as N8UR's. I have used the same setup for measuring signals on HF, TV carriers and the HDTV pilot signals. It is amazing how many TV signals I can detect using the ICOM R-7000 receiver, Discone antenna up 60-feet, and Spectrum Lab to dig the carriers out of the noise. In the case of channel 3 I can detect three analog TV carriers because of the carrier offsets (+/-/0). I think they are from Huntington, WV, Louisville, KY, and Cleveland, OH. Mike WB8GXB W4wj@aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 10/18/2006 12:26:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, > kb7nie@arrl.net writes: > > The November QST has an announcement for the "2006 Frequency Measuring Test" > ( www.arrl.org/w1aw/fmt - though the 2006 announcement has not made it to > the website yet). The object is to determine as accurately as possible the > carrier frequency of a signal sent from W1AW on the 160m, 80m and 40m > bands. There will also be a signal sent from the west coast on the 40m > band. A lot of time nuts are hams. Who plans on participating? > > Henry > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts