is this a good deal ?

[Frank Gentges KØBRA]

Sandy,

I don't know anything first hand.  The specs look like it is pretty good 
but a generation behind with only 6 parallel receive channels.  I suspect 
these are used and a lot of these are showing up on eBay as well as this 
site.  These conform with a Qualcom spec which may mean they are used with 
some sort of cell phone system for time and frequency use.  With all these 
units on the market I suspect some will show up cheaper as the small time 
and frequency market gets saturated.

Newer chip sets do 12 channels but they do not provide the nice 10 MHz 
output.  Several provide a 1 pps though.  Depending on your use, the 
position fix is probably good but not significantly better and perhaps 
somewhat worse compared to the newer chip sets.  The position output is not 
specified anywhere I can see.  It may be something weird and may not be 
used with common GPS mapping software like DeLorme puts out.

The 1 pps is probably about the same.  The 10 MHz is not available with the 
common chip sets.

I have some Leica (previously Magnavox) precision survey receivers which 
provide a great 1 pps output but no high quality 10 MHz output.  They 
report position in a proprietary format that cannot be easily used.

If you are looking for a high quality 10 MHz source and can wait for a 
while until these guys get tired of looking at them you may pick some of 
these up for a song.  I'd buy a little Garmen for now if you just need a 
position fix.

Frank

At 07:32 PM 4/4/02 -0500, Nan and Sandy Sanders wrote:
>  http://www.hitechcafe.com/eshop/product.asp?sku=z3801a&dept_id=14
>
>   Hewlett Packard GPS RECEIVER Z3801A  $399.00
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Frank Gentges KØBRA
<fgentges@mindspring.com>
LF web site at <http://www.amrad.org/projects/lf>