Some time ago I read about a lottery conducted by the German company Meinberg Funkuhren GmbH & Co. KG. The prizes should be seven DCF77 computer clocks and three GPS time receivers. After the drawing the winners must use their clocks to contribute to the NTP Project. In order to win one just had to give away an email address.
After having done so, I almost forgot the lottery and was really surprised to get a notification that I won a PZF180PEX together with an external antenna and accessories.
After some days everything arrived and I tried to install the hardware. Unfortunately the conditions for reception of the DCF77 signal were really bad at the originally planned location. So I had to install a spare computer at another place with better conditions.
As there is no Debian package available for the driver, I had to compile the software on my own. This raised some issues, which could be resolved rather quickly by the Meinberg support team. At the end I got a beta version of the new software and everything was fine.
Afterwards I reconfigured other external servers to use that internal clock as well. As a result the NTP pool got no new stratum 1 server, but in compensation three stratum 2 servers.
Anyway, thanks alot to the Meinberg team for their generous donor.