Author Topic: Ham Radio Lab Equipment  (Read 14664 times)

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Offline nctnico

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #25 on: February 08, 2016, 06:55:43 pm »
I'm missing the 5TVO generator/receiver in the list!
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #26 on: February 08, 2016, 08:54:55 pm »
Network analyzer...
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Richard Head

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #27 on: February 09, 2016, 05:50:27 am »
I held back on the VNA! For a ham radio enthusiast?
Maybe a mini-VNA.
 

Offline dkozel

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #28 on: February 09, 2016, 06:11:16 am »
A VNA is very useful for doing filter, amplifier, and other component characterization. Try tuning a duplexer or cavity filter without one. It's possible, but painful. They are expensive though, no way around that. But good deals can be found on units up to 3 or 6 GHz for $2000 if you're fortunate, $3-4000 otherwise. For that much you can get one of the http://www.megiq.com/ ones new of course.
 

Offline TSL

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #29 on: February 09, 2016, 06:40:29 am »
For the most bang-for-buck its hard to go past a Radio Test Set.
I have an HP 8935 aka E6380 on my bench and it does all this for 400kHz to 1Ghz and an upper band of 1.7Ghz to 2GHz...

"RF analyzer, AF Analyzer, RF Generator, Tone Encoder, Tone Decoder, Spectrum Analyzer / Tracking Generator. Also included is  Power Meter, Sinad and Distortion meters, Full Duplex operation, AC/ DC Voltmeter, Self Diagnostic Tests, and Configure Screens. It has 2 AF generators useful for generating 1000Hz tone and CTCSS tones at the same time, 2 uV "off the air" sensitive receiver, AM, FM and SSB modes, 75 Watt continuous or 125 Watt intermittent power input, antenna, duplex and RF I/O ports. "

The included RF Tools program has the following...
Swept Gain, Discrete Freq Insertion Loss, Swept Insertion Loss, Swept Return Loss, Cable Fault and Power Meter.

More info here...

http://www.amtronix.com/e6380a.htm

No relation to Amtronix other than a happy customer

You can find these from about $800US and up depending on condition or calibration. I bough mine from Amtronix calibrated for about $1500 a few years ago

Saves a lot of bench space from not having too many discrete test instruments.


VK2XAX :: QF56if :: BMARC :: WIA :: AMSATVK
 

Offline TSL

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #30 on: February 09, 2016, 06:42:27 am »
Almost forgot, I also highly recommend a Sark 110 Antenna Analyzer, it too is a very capable instrument and it fits in your pocket :)

http://www.sark110.com/
VK2XAX :: QF56if :: BMARC :: WIA :: AMSATVK
 

Offline wkb

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #31 on: February 09, 2016, 02:38:45 pm »
I'm missing the 5TVO generator/receiver in the list!

Suddenly smells like TMC-84's around here?  :o
 

Offline mojoe

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #32 on: February 09, 2016, 06:29:08 pm »
For the most bang-for-buck its hard to go past a Radio Test Set.
I have an HP 8935 aka E6380 on my bench and it does all this for 400kHz to 1Ghz and an upper band of 1.7Ghz to 2GHz...

"RF analyzer, AF Analyzer, RF Generator, Tone Encoder, Tone Decoder, Spectrum Analyzer / Tracking Generator. Also included is  Power Meter, Sinad and Distortion meters, Full Duplex operation, AC/ DC Voltmeter, Self Diagnostic Tests, and Configure Screens. It has 2 AF generators useful for generating 1000Hz tone and CTCSS tones at the same time, 2 uV "off the air" sensitive receiver, AM, FM and SSB modes, 75 Watt continuous or 125 Watt intermittent power input, antenna, duplex and RF I/O ports. "

The included RF Tools program has the following...
Swept Gain, Discrete Freq Insertion Loss, Swept Insertion Loss, Swept Return Loss, Cable Fault and Power Meter.

More info here...

http://www.amtronix.com/e6380a.htm

No relation to Amtronix other than a happy customer

You can find these from about $800US and up depending on condition or calibration. I bough mine from Amtronix calibrated for about $1500 a few years ago

Saves a lot of bench space from not having too many discrete test instruments.

I can also recommend Amtronix. Several years ago, I bought an HP E8285A from Amtronix. See this page for description: http://www.amtronix.com/e8285a.htm

This page shows the differences between the various models: http://www.amtronix.com/diff.htm. As you can see, the two "E" instruments are very similar in functionality.

I would have prefered an 8920 or 8921, but the cost was more than I could afford. If you don't care about HF, those 8924C's can often be had cheaply. There is a Yahoo group (HP 8924C), but all of these models are discussed.

The E8285A input is fixed at 2.5W and is not upgradable. I simply added a 50W, 20dB attenuator on the front (good for up to 250W intermittantly) and set the attenuation factor in the settings (saved everything with the name POWERON).

A word of warning if you intend to buy an E8285A from ebay or elsewhere. Only certain early models had the input attenuators factory calibrated at the low end. With the older firmware re-flashed, these units work great all the way down to 400KHz. Newer models were only factory calibrated for the higher frequencies (I think it was 10MHz and up, but I'm not sure) and will not work accurately below that, regardless of firmware. Get the SN of any potential purchase and check with Amtronix before buying. The E8285A was sold for CDMA cellular testing, so it is no surprise that they stopped calibrating them for the lower frequencies.

Like a lot of the test equipment talked about here, it is 20-30 years old, but it still works well. To my knowledge, there are only two companies still making service monitors (communications analyzers). Aeroflex (now Cobham) makes three models and General Dynamics makes one or two. Motorola and others sell the GD unit with their own name on it.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #33 on: February 09, 2016, 06:45:35 pm »
re: network analyzer.

For hams, in the ham bands up to a bit over one GHz, DG8SAQ's design for an inexpensive network analyzer looks hard to beat for simplicity and value.

"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline peteb2

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #34 on: March 17, 2018, 11:21:39 pm »
I own a Sark-110 purely for checking my SW-DXL aerial setups (and 50ohm RF coax response). I  just received a Facebook message of some news about the Sark-110 analyzer... It could be of use to others... not using Facebook... It reads along these lines:

Source code is now available. Also available, a Linux implementation of a TCP server for code communication which includes the USB interfacing code to the unit. This can be a starting point for development of a Linus Client.

https://github.com/EA4FRB/sark110_dll

https://github.com/EA4FRB/sark110-srv-linux

Intention:  open source code will facilitate the development of third-party clients.
 

Offline Martin.M

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #35 on: March 28, 2018, 07:51:02 pm »
a nice sweeper.
and HF mV Meter, cal. in dBµV

 

Offline JTY

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #36 on: March 31, 2018, 07:40:32 pm »
Not equipment per se, but good low loss patch cables and adapters. As well as a ground bus bar, for grounding equipment, etc.
 

Offline tkamiya

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #37 on: May 08, 2018, 07:28:58 pm »
A directional coupler and a high quality terminator.
 

Offline TheDane

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #38 on: May 09, 2018, 07:47:26 am »
SDR capable of transmitting (wideband) - cheap usb dongles can usually only receive, and typically with a very limited bandwidth.
PC capable of interfacing with the SDR, can be running Windows or Linux variants. Can also run loggers, recorders, encoder/decoders + the cheap SDR dongles at the same time, if powerfull enough  ^-^

There has been some recent development in the SDR scene, and the HackRF One with the new firmware allows you to make huge wideband scans of the entire 0 – 6 GHz range of the HackRF in under one second (8 GHz/s)  :wtf:

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/scanning-spectrum-8ghz-per-second-new-hackrf-update/

The HackRF one is readily avaliable, typically at a fair price around £185 - comes with antennas and a metal shield. They are cheaper without, especially from China.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HackRF-1-One-RTL-SDR-Software-Defined-Radio-Board-1MHz-6GHz-w-CNC-Shell-UK-FAST/273179626058
Much cheaper than a spectrum analyzer, but it lacks the tracking function  :rant:
 

Offline Ghislain

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #39 on: May 10, 2018, 11:03:11 am »
A decent LCR meter (provided you are into DIY projects)
 

Offline FlyingHacker

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Re: Ham Radio Lab Equipment
« Reply #40 on: May 11, 2018, 01:08:32 am »
For the record, nobody was arguing regarding the VTVM. I asked why one would be used instead of a regular voltmeter.

Try aligning a radio with a DMM. Then try aligning one with a VTVM.

It is so much easier to get good nulls and peaks required for alignment when using an analog meter. You need it to be a VTVM vs. a VOM due to the high input impedance.
--73
 


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