What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[Ground_Loop]

Just arrived today. Hopefully, I can start saying goodbye to braid and spring suckers.

[BU508A]

Bought today a MASTECH MS8911 on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/283341251476

[lukego]

Leica S9D microscope. Replaces my Eakins (AmScope clone from AliExpress.) First impression is that it's twice as good for ten times the price. Maybe not a game changer but a solid improvement on brightness, magnification range, clarity at high mag, depth of field, ergonomics. Looking forward to breaking it in now.

[ChristofferB]

The Lecroy multi-channel analyzer arrived today!

Just look at this cute blue thing! Uses an XY scope for monitor!

[TSCOLAN]

Hi everyone,

New toys arrived ...

A LM399H Voltage Reference, to check my two HP3456A. Preliminary test are promising on the twenty year old calibration of the two meters. I did also include pics from my custom un-calibrated one (using LM399AH).

A beautiful HP 5326B with eight nixies (Opt 001), from Max K., this is the one spotted on his video BEB #125 .

A Goerz-Metrawatt SE460 recorder, it seemed smaller on ePay than when it was delivered... If ever anybody have schematics or service manual for it, feel free to share it, I did not find it :(

Thomas

[GerritMax]

All I bought was a Manual Coil Winder, was said to arrive next thursday but arrived today 
I need to rewind a transformer and make it 24V instead of 12V.

[I wanted a rude username]

Seems well reviewed.

Also I love that it's branded "Katsu" ... Japanese for cutlet/schitzel. 

[ChristofferB]

A Goerz-Metrawatt SE460 recorder, it seemed smaller on ePay than when it was delivered... If ever anybody have schematics or service manual for it, feel free to share it, I did not find it

Looks great! Is it 6-channel? Looks to have only 3 pens.

I hope you have a source of pens and paper for it! They can be difficult to find nowdays. I ended up having to make custom pens for my plotters.

[TSCOLAN]

Looks great! Is it 6-channel? Looks to have only 3 pens.

I hope you have a source of pens and paper for it! They can be difficult to find nowdays. I ended up having to make custom pens for my plotters.

It does have all six pens ! All with tiny caps, and only one is dry. But, the better is they are refillable as told by instructions on the "paper tray".

For the paper it is still available for now, not so cheap (10€/roll), I ordered some. But you're right they soon will become unobtainium.

[mansaxel]

Hi everyone,

New toys arrived ...

A beautiful HP 5326B with eight nixies (Opt 001), from Max K., this is the one spotted on his video BEB #125 .

I considered that one. As it displays output, I assume you fixed it, or did it come repaired?

[TSCOLAN]

I considered that one. As it displays output, I assume you fixed it, or did it come repaired?

I had to fix it, it had two faults, maybe caused by the possible short identified by Max :
- the LSD nixie's current limiting resistor was burned (visible on Max's video at 5:19) probably because of a bad "0" in the tube, resistor replaced, and exchanged the LSD and MSD tubes (as MSD rarely display a "0") ; the fuse on the +175v rail was blown because of this also.
- the -5V series pass transistor was open (it was reading -3.XXv because of some flow from the -16.5v rail) I replaced it with a BD139

[mansaxel]

A Fluke 8020B. 20€ plus domestic shipping.
Pic from sellers ad:

It's going to need a good cleaning, and then it'll spend the rest of its life looking up to its bigger brother the 8060A.

You can never have enough multimeters.

[Ed.Kloonk]

[cdev]

The one handed operation capable multimeter.

A Fluke 8020B. 20€ plus domestic shipping.
Pic from sellers ad:

It's going to need a good cleaning, and then it'll spend the rest of its life looking up to its bigger brother the 8060A.

You can never have enough multimeters.

[cdev]

That's a really gorgeous old machine. If I were you Id stock up on the paper and keep it in a sealed bag so it doesn't yellow.

 

For the paper it is still available for now, not so cheap (10€/roll), I ordered some. But you're right they soon will become unobtainium.

Its nice that it uses real pens and real paper. Thermal paper is actually bad for your health. It uses an endocrine disrupting chemical, BPS to create an image.

[beanflying]

A bit OT but if you need a flame/heat source onsite (Coffee or even Bacon and Eggs ) and dislike LPG or worse Butane these are a good thing I ordered a few weeks ago. Came with a good kit of orings and basic spares. No it won't be living on top of the 3458A waiting for bench space and time 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1769593625.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.39544c4d5HMe2a

[lukego]

Manfrotto Magic Arm. Just realized how well they work as adjustable armrests when working above a preheater with a microscope at long working distance (bench at waist height.) I reckon it would also work well for holding a hot air gun with a clamp during rework.

[exe]

A Fluke 8020B. 20€ plus domestic shipping.

Ah, those old flukes. I've never had one. I wanted to do this mode (led display) http://mrmodemhead.com/blog/a-very-unique-fluke-8060a/ , but I simply have too many dmms... (time for TEA?)

[mansaxel]

A bit OT but if you need a flame/heat source onsite (Coffee or even Bacon and Eggs ) and dislike LPG or worse Butane these are a good thing I ordered a few weeks ago. Came with a good kit of orings and basic spares. No it won't be living on top of the 3458A waiting for bench space and time 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1769593625.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.39544c4d5HMe2a

I've got one of these:



And onetwo of these:



The Trangia of course can run on alcohol, too, and my stoves were bought with spirit burners and I've got them in storage, but the butane/propane mix is much more convenient. No soot, regulation worth talking about, and at least three times the power.

[CatalinaWOW]

I fell out of love with the butane-propane mix ones after a few camping trips where even after spending the night in the bag with me the fuel wouldn't vaporize enough to burn.  Of course you haven't lived until you have had a canteen freeze inside your sleeping bag.

I suspect that proper cans work fairly well, but I have gotten quite a few that seem very heavy on the butane and light on the propane side.  Maybe just an effect of natural fractionation.  Works fine first time, but on really cold days the cans should lose more propane than butane so on a second light might be in trouble.

[technix]

A bunch of radio stuff recently, after I got my ham license:

* A 2x used Kenwood TK-8100-1 25W UHF transceiver lot (very dirty and in the wrong band initially, washed and modded before use)
* A used Kenwood TM-471A 60W UHF transceiver (also needs washing, but already in the correct band.)
* An unbranded 435MHz antenna with coax and stand.

73 de BH4FHO.

[beanflying]

I fell out of love with the butane-propane mix ones after a few camping trips where even after spending the night in the bag with me the fuel wouldn't vaporize enough to burn.  Of course you haven't lived until you have had a canteen freeze inside your sleeping bag.

I suspect that proper cans work fairly well, but I have gotten quite a few that seem very heavy on the butane and light on the propane side.  Maybe just an effect of natural fractionation.  Works fine first time, but on really cold days the cans should lose more propane than butane so on a second light might be in trouble.

I am downright suspicious of Butane Cans in particular opened ones in Cars in the Aussie Summer.  Even the shellite in the tank is a bit of a worry but less so. For longer Camping trips instead of just a Roadside Coffee I have more LPG burners BBQ's and ring burners than I can use Paella Pans for 120+ serves or a Hot Plates instead;)

[bob91343]

Day before yesterday, a Tektronix 2440 digital oscilloscope.  Not so sure I want to keep it but time will tell.  Supposedly 300 MHz but I measured around 275.  Agrees rather closely with my other test gear, regarding wave shape and frequency and amplitude.

I haven't figured out if it does FFT or can smoothly vary sweep rate.

[ChristofferB]

Got a cute little 15 kV 300 uA PSU! 0-16V in, 0-15kV out!

A Venus Scientific LU15A. Apparently these were quite common for aircraft CRT's back in the day.

Here it's seen putting 15kV through an old TV tube, with some blue fluorescence and a small amount of x-rays.

[ocw]

I purchased a Mini-Circuits SCLF-10+ 10 MHz low pass filter and added SMA connectors.  I thought that I would compare the high frequency roll-off of that compared to that from BG7TBL's 10 MHz band pass filter.  The low pass filter (without the SMA connectors) is not that much more expensive--$13.94 at Mouser.  While the BG8TBL's frequency response is not bad, as expected the Mini-Circuits filter has a sharper roll-off.  That is shown on the first attachment.

I thought that I would also compare two other 10 MHz low pass filters which instead have BNC connectors.  I compared the Mini-Circuits BLP-10.7 to Crystek CLPFL-0010-BNC.  The BLP filter obviously starts its roll-off a bit higher in frequency, however the Crystek filter has the lowest level of all four above 20 MHz.  See the second attachment.

While the BG4TBL filter is just 44 dB down at 30 MHz as compared to over 62 dB for the others, that is still adequate most of the time for converting a 10 MHz square wave into a sine wave.