[time-nuts] Test Equipment

[Nick Foster]

Late to the party, I know, but I'd like to put in another recommendation for the DG8SAQ VNA. It's cheap, accurate, and best of all -- SMALL! It occupies 4"x3"x2" and so doesn't take up a whole desk. If 1.3GHz is enough for you, that might be the way to go. You get about 90dB of dynamic range. You can export the data easily since the signal processing is done by the host PC. And the software contains an integrated math engine that lets you do reasonably complicated signal processing in custom traces, something I used to do by exporting data and plotting in Matlab.

Nick


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> Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:44:53 -0500
> From: john.foege at gmail.com
> To: time-nuts at febo.com
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Test Equipment
>
> Thanks to everyone who answered in this thread.I am keenly interested
> in everything everyone had to say!
>
> One of the things that seems like a no-brainer, would be to scrape
> together the $700 and get an Agilent E8285A CDMA test set. It seems
> like I can't go wrong with that! My only concern with getting these
> off eBay or from anywhere else for that matter, is that apparently the
> later versions firmware only support 800Mhz and up operation instead
> of the earlier versions 100kHz-1Ghz.
>
> Unfortunately, Amtronix seems to have run out, or at least are on
> their last 1-2 units. I wont have the cash in time to get one, as they
> have sold 35 in the last month alone.
>
> Sigh.
>
> Another very cool set of toys that had been mentioned, were the Tek
> TM500 series, which I am also interested in! I don't need any of the
> freq. counter plugins, but the power supply, func. generators, etc.
> All very cool!
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Magnus Danielson
>  wrote:
>> Bob Camp wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> About 8 years ago a whole lot of companies dumped a whole lot of test
>>> gear. Prices dropped rapidly as they did so. It's taken us all quite a while
>>> to burn through that pile of stuff.
>>> The amazing thing is that as bad as the economy is now, you don't see
>>> people doing the same sort of thing. You see oceans of people out of work,
>>> but not piles of test gear getting sold off.
>>
>> Well, when the .com bubble bursted, it had been preceeded by massive
>> acceleration of an instrument-hungry industry. As the bubble bursted, both
>> .com companies and otherwise stable companies accelerated by their customers
>> suffered. Some folded in and some just barely survived.
>>
>> This time it was the economy folks that fluked it. Instrument hungry
>> industry only suffers indirectly.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Magnus
>>
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