Author Topic: Anritsu Scorpion MS462X ALC calib power meter options  (Read 568 times)

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Offline alan.bainTopic starter

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Anritsu Scorpion MS462X ALC calib power meter options
« on: October 22, 2023, 10:40:33 pm »
The manual for the MS462XX stipulates an Anritsu power meter (ML2430A) which itself can emulate HP436A/437B/438A for the ALC procedure which is performed under GPIB control. 

I've got a suitable HP power sensor and cable, but always used a meter without GPIB.  HP437Bs were once practically given away (without power sensors) but now seem hard to find. I'm trying to work out if a 436A or 438A could be used instead as they seem marginally more findable on the second hand market.  Does anyone know if any of these can be used to perform the calibration?  Mine got lost due to BBRAM failure.

The 436A is old style state-machine single character GPIB commands.  The 437B and 438A are more similar - although not identical (best comparison I know of is in the Gigatronix 8650 manual e.g. https://manuals.repeater-builder.com/te-files/GIG/GIG%208650%20Series%20Operation.pdf
 

Offline DaJMasta

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Re: Anritsu Scorpion MS462X ALC calib power meter options
« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2023, 05:01:11 am »
Almost every newer meter speaks the old GPIB commands through an option setting, when I had to do this with a similar VNA, I used an 8541C, but if you've already got the sensor - I would have thought the later HP meters would still fit the bill.

In any case, there's some discussion of the individual protocols here: https://www.manualsdir.com/manuals/44433/anritsu-ml2430a.html?page=182 maybe that can shed some light on how cross compatible they are.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2023, 05:06:10 am by DaJMasta »
 
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Offline alan.bainTopic starter

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Re: Anritsu Scorpion MS462X ALC calib power meter options
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2023, 06:31:29 pm »
So to leave here in case anyone else finds useful I tried an HP438A. The VNA talked to this fine, but it was a bit unclear what calibration factor to use.  The value set was that for the 50MHz calibration source (using an 8481A sensor). The calibration seemed to use this single value over the whole frequency range and clearly at 3GHz the sensor cal factor is not the same as at 50MHz. I was expecting either to be able to enter a table, or to be prompted to change it at various points, but this didn't seem to be an option. It seemed to assume that the power meter did some automatic table lookup, but I've not used a power meter modern enough to have such a feature.

Alan
 


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