Hobbyist project emissions testing...

[westfw]

Suppose I am a hobbyist with some basic test equipment (an oscilloscope) and parts, and I'd like to do some basically qualitative or comparison of RF emissions of home-built projects.   Nothing that would pass for actual product testing, of course, but ... something that would allow you to look at a PCB vs a breadboard, or "look at how emissions go up if I attach a 6inch wire to the micro's crystal oscillator output!", or (perhaps most importantly?)  "this is terrible" vs "this doesn't look too bad."

I guess it'd essentially be a sort of broad-spectrum radio receiver with a "received power" indication?

Is that possible?  Reasonable to construct from ordinary parts?  I don't really care about specific frequencies (I don't think.)  Just sort of overall "leakiness"...

[fourtytwo42]

What about using a laptop SDR with external antenna,that way you get to see amplitude and frequency and can make whatever probe suits your needs

[mmagin]

I use a cheap USB SA, an eBay calibrated RF generator and a microwave oven to do pre-testing.

A microwave oven is not an effective Faraday cage, except at 2.4 GHz due to how it relies upon the geometry of the door flange being a quarter-wave trap.  You'd be better off taking a metal toolbox or filing cabinet and adding some sort of conductive gasketing / contacts to the openings.