Calibration to Rubidium Frequency Standards

What do you as a customer really need and expect from a calibration house. You might be an electrician with a loop tester with that NICEIC inspector coming next week, and a great calamity is about to befall you if your instruments are not calibrated. In your company perhaps you have an infrared thermometer, a Marconi radio test set, a fibre-optic power meter, or even a microwave leak detector. Where do you go to get your instrument calibrated with a certificate of calibration to show that your instrument is fully functional to manufacturers' specifications, and at a reasonable price?
Well, the old yellow pages are restricted to your local telephone area, and may not have a suitable calibration house listed that can calibrate your instrument. The modern method these days is to use the internet, and, searching for “calibration prices” on a search engine such as “Google” is perhaps a good start to finding what you need. Prices and quality of service vary and can sometimes be misleading in what you get for your money.
Ideally you should choose a calibration house that has high quality calibrators, is an ISO registered company with set quality procedures, gives a good service at a reasonable price, and will look after you when you are in trouble. Of course you will have your favourite calibration house you have always been with, just because you didn't know where else to go, and why should you. But as you would expect, this article aims to show you why this calibration house at Glanford Electronics, has all the qualities to fulfil your needs.

Most calibration houses try to achieve a high accuracy in calibrating customer's instruments. Much depends on what the instrument is as to what accuracy is actually achievable. A simple thermometer that has a manufacturer's stated accuracy of ±2° is in itself a rough and ready item, whereas ±0.1° is much better. High accuracy calibrators and associated equipment make all the difference as to the quality and final statement of uncertainty on a Certificate of calibration. The “statement of uncertainty” is the combination of the accuracy factors of all the items used in calibrating customers instruments. Although most calibrators are manufactured to high standards, good quality calibrators can take onboard an external frequency standard to improve their accuracy and stability even further. The well known off air standard broadcast from the 198 kHz BBC Radio 4 transmitters at Droitwich has been used for years to this end. Apart from calibrating measuring instrumentation, at Glanford Electronics we need high accuracy in the mobile radio sphere, where radio calibrators need to be really accurate. To achieve this we have now installed a multi-output Rubidium Frequency Standard with an accuracy of parts 10^-13. This allows us to bring simultaneously a number of calibrators up to this higher standard with our GPS10RBN from Precision Test Systems. The GPS10RBN is a 10 MHz GPS disciplined rubidium frequency standard. It combines the short term stability of an atomic rubidium oscillator with the long term stability and traceabilty of the Global Positioning Service set of satellites. The GPS10RBN achieves short and long term frequency accuracy of parts in 10^-13. Thus the GPS10RBN

exceeds the requirements of a Stratum 1 level frequency standard.

With this extra accuracy and stability, our calibrators can achieve a higher standard of calibration to our customers' equipment that most calibration houses struggle to attain. As you can imagine we are really pleased with our new toy, and hope that you will be pleased with the knowledge that your equipment will be calibrated with the best attention to detail we can give at Glanford Electronics.
Our company offers a comprehensive calibration and repair service on industrial instrumentation including Avo Megger meters, digital meters, oscilloscopes, Pat Testers, Insulation & Loop Testers, Infrared Thermometers and Temperature, RF Equipment, Marconi 2955, Spectrum analysers, Fibre optic power meters, Light meters, microwave leak detectors, sound level meters, Pressure, gas detection and cable location equipment.
Fluke 5700