I have two needs for upcoming projects, at most loosely related to one another. The total knowledge of this group makes me look like a complete neophyte, with only a few decades of experience, so maybe you can guide me away from making a mistake.
The first need is for a frequency reference. I have a project in progress now, where within a couple weeks I'm going to need to be able to measure frequency to better than 1 ppm. I'm thinking to use a GPSDO to feed a reference into my HP8595E and check its calibration (it doesn't seem to have an external reference input), or to feed it into the Ext Ref input of my HP8714ET. I see a lot of different GPSDO units on ePay; is there anything I should look for or avoid? Note that my office / lab is rather marginal for receiving GPS, with a couple floors above it as well as a lot of trees. But I could if necessary put the GPSDO outdoors and feed the 10 MHz inside on a cable.
The second need is a near field probe and/or calibrated antenna for doing pre-compliance measurements on designs that usually come in so far below the limits as to be hard to even detect. I see about three different classes of NFP on ePay: a grouping around $30, another around $100, and yet another around $500, all for kits of four NFP. What are the differences, and again what should I watch for?
Any hints welcome, and if I'm too far OT just say so.
Steve Hendrix
