Iltarastit Luukki, 7k

Time to start the autumn orienteering season - itärastit starts this week, and there are three firmaliiga events starting next tuesday.

OK going on #1-#4, then quite challenging legs and controls on #5-#7. Had no good plan for finding #10, just wandering in the right direction, when a clearer plan via the stone lower down the hill would have been better.

Pulse distribution amplifier output skew

Here is the measured output delay skew from four of my "PDA 2017.01" designs, based on LT1711 comparator driving a 74AC14 schmidt trigger which in turn drives eight 74AC04 output-stages.

Also included is my earlier measurement of an Ettus OctoClock.

Although the PCB was designed with equal-length traces for the output stages it appears that channels 3-4 and 5-6 are consistently late, and some shortening of the traces would improve things. I tried this on one PCB (blue data points) with moderate success.

Measurement setup: 1PPS source to 50-ohm splitter. One output of the splitter drives CH1(start) of a time interval counter (HPAK 53230A), the other output drives the input of the pulse distribution amplifier. Outputs wired to CH2(stop) of the counter and measured for 100 s or more (delay is average of 100 pulses). Counter inputs DC-coupled, 50 Ohms, trigger level 1.0 V.