> I don't know if they still do, but I believe when the PAL colour
> stations were first set up they used a rubidium standard for
> generating this

They still do - if I can get access to it then that would be sweet
for calibration

http://msl.irl.cri.nz/services/time/

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Colour Burst

Colour television in New Zealand uses the PAL system which requires
a stable sub carrier of 4.433 618 75 MHz =B1 1 Hz. The colour burst signal
for TV1 and TV2 are locked to a rubidium vapour atomic standard at the
studio. The rubidium oscillator has a long-term drift of better than 1 part
in 1011 per month. The colour burst signal is transmitted in the form of
a burst of approximately 10 cycles of 4.433 618 75 MHz at the start of
each line of the colour picture. A crystal oscillator in the TV set is
locked
to this burst and thus to the rubidium atomic frequency standard. The
signal is easily extracted from a modern TV set using only three components

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