Reliability of performance

An oscillator should begin working as soon as the power is supplied. It should keep oscillating under all the normal conditions, not quitting if load changes slightly or if temperature increases or falls. A finicky oscillator is a big annoyance. The failure of a single oscillator can cause an whole transmitter, receiver, or transceiver to stop working. An oscillator is at times called as unstable if it has to be coaxed in beginning, or if it quits unpredictably.

Some of the oscillator circuits are more reliable than others.When the oscillator is built and put to use in a radio transmitter, receiver, or audio device, debugging is always required. This happens due to differences in the quality of components which don’t show up until acid test.

Oscillators are designed to work in certain range of load impedances.  It is important that load impedance not be too low. If the load impedance is quite low, the load will try to draw power from the oscillator. Then, even a well designed oscillator may be unstable. Oscillators are not meant to generate powerful signals. High power is obtained by using amplification after oscillator.