Message posted by gary on October 07, 2002 at 12:26:30 PST:

Another possibility for this thing that looks like an antenna on top of the pole is that it may be a GPS antenna. OK, at first that sounds silly since why would something not moving use a GPS. Well, it turns out in digital radio networking, the GPS system is used to generate a very accurate clock. Without going into way to much detail, the GPS satellites have Cesium clocks on board, which in turn control the time signal in the GPS data stream. Using this time signal, you can adjust a local oscillator, or as they say in the business, create a disciplined oscillator, which gets further abbreviated as GPS-DO. I included a link to one of the vendors active antennas used to receive the GPS signal.

I should have thought of this earlier as I have bought these GPS antennas at local flea markets for friends who have built their own GPS-DO. Often antenna sites are totally stripped of their hardware because the land was leased and the lease was terminated, and the hardware shows up at local electronics flea markets rather than being reused. Generally the replacement site is set up first before the old hardware is removed, hence the old hardware becomes surplus.

In Reply to: Re: Badger Mountain posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on October 06, 2002 at 15:22:59 PST:

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