Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

When I was living at Sutton Wharf in Rochford we were close enough to Southend airport that we got a great view of the BoB memorial flight whenever they did a show in Kent, as they used to fuel up there. The sound of all those Merlins.... bliss!

I'm well up for seeing a Spit, always am. They have the same appeal to me as the early Tek 'scopes - beautiful industrial design at its absolute best.

Sutton Wharf is a boat yard, where you living on a house boat?

[GerryBags]

Sutton Wharf is a boat yard, where you living on a house boat?

erm... Not if you work for the council. If you don't, then yes, on a big old rotting Grand Banks 48' woody. Built of finest Honduras mahogany and marine ply which was coming to the end of its life. Someone fitter than I am has taken it over now. It had a great hull treatment, though. It was 'cascovered' from new, which is strips of canvas soaked in Resorcinol resin, the adhesive used in marine ply in the past. Everything below the water-line was in great condition.

[Specmaster]

Off Topic, but these are a few of the 1080 photos I took of my day out at the Old Warden 1st air show of the season. For those that don't know, Old Warden is the home the world famous Shuttleworth Collection and they have many old planes there, some from the Edwardian days and one of those is 106 years old still fly's. You can get up close and personal with the planes as they park them along the crowd line and I was in the 2nd row of people back from the crowd line and the planes were parked up literally just 50ft in front of me. When they turn them around and start up ready for their display slot , if you're right behind them at that time, you really have to hang onto everything or else it will get blown away from the propeller wash and many people lost hats.

The following photos are just a quick flavor of what was there, no pics of the typhoon as it was too far away and high, it became a dot on the photo because of new regulations for airshows and high energy aircraft.

[GerryBags]

 

Really great photography, and some gorgeous 'planes to boot. The shot of the two Hurricanes is as good as any airshow photo I've seen.

[Brumby]

Now I'm going to have to see if I can find "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines"....

My favourite piston engine aircraft are the Spitfire and the Lancaster bomber.  I always find a smile when I see the Spitfire in any movie scene ... even when they have them flying into space attacking an orbiting spaceship, complete with aerial acrobatic manoeuvres (but that's Dr Who for you).

Nice pics.   

[tggzzz]

Now I'm going to have to see if I can find "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines"....

My favourite piston engine aircraft are the Spitfire and the Lancaster bomber.  I always find a smile when I see the Spitfire in any movie scene ... even when they have them flying into space attacking an orbiting spaceship, complete with aerial acrobatic manoeuvres (but that's Dr Who for you).

... and most other SF films albeit with rather distorted spitfires

[Specmaster]

Slacking sunday - not. After much dicking around I decided to do an LCR meter properly and design a PCB and get it made up. Mainly because codeine for foot injury + manually routing board by hand on paper turned into something Dali would have come up with. 

Schematic capture done. Now to fuck around trying to spend 9 hours entering footprints for latching changeover switches and working out how to cram it all in a Hammond 1599.

Step 1 ...



Parts are chosen for economy not necessarily optimum for the job

Nice, is this going to be a 2 or 4 wire system?

[bd139]

Nice photos BTW.

It's a 2 wire as it's doing only L & C. R I don't care about.

Having some problems with KiCad at the moment which appears to be drunk and dumping the resistors all over the shit in 3d mode:

[tautech]

Nice photos BTW.

It's a 2 wire as it's doing only L & C. R I don't care about.

Having some problems with KiCad at the moment which appears to be drunk and dumping the resistors all over the shit in 3d mode:

I was gunna say something about penis fingers ......but I won't. 

[Brumby]

Your resistors have been centred over one of their mounting holes, rather than aligned to both of them.

[bd139]

Yep indeed. This is a Kicad bug however (not Penis Fingers this time  ). The boards are fine.

[Specmaster]

Nice photos BTW.

It's a 2 wire as it's doing only L & C. R I don't care about.

Having some problems with KiCad at the moment which appears to be drunk and dumping the resistors all over the shit in 3d mode:

Thanks, it was really rammed, over 7600 there yesterday.

Board layout looks good apart from the bug, I need to learn how use KiCad and then I can start experimenting with ideas.

[bd139]

I've scrapped the layout and started again. Have ordered the enclosure and will print out a blank board and fit it and do the switch and display positions first. Starting with the board was a stupid idea. Because this frustrated me I dumped it for the day and went to play with my radios 

[AF6LJ]

Fun project, looks Cool. 

[Specmaster]

I've scrapped the layout and started again. Have ordered the enclosure and will print out a blank board and fit it and do the switch and display positions first. Starting with the board was a stupid idea. Because this frustrated me I dumped it for the day and went to play with my radios 

Good idea as the switch positions will have an impact on the board layout if they are PCB mounted switches.

[bd139]

Yeah exactly. They are latching changeover switches so the switch travel and alignment has to be spot on otherwise they'll stick out too far or be impossible to unlatch.

Credit to VK3BHR here though. It's their design. I'm just repackaging it as I wasn't happy with the board layout, enclosure and lack of gerbers etc. Which is fine as they nicked it off AADE's manual

[PedroDaGr8]

Picked up a for parts/as is BK 9310 on eBay, for dirt cheap. Mainly because I wanted a three channel supply, plus I wanted a new project to try to fix. As they indicated a single channel worked, I figured  there was a decent chance to revive the device. While they wanted way too much, I was able negotiate them down to $150 shipped. Received the item and while notably damaged (stand was cracked, knob and bezel missing, and dirty as all get out) after resetting the settings it worked perfectly. A new stand, bezel, and knob set me back $35 plus shipping and now it looks great! Well worth the $180 that I paid IMHO.

Next upgrades, routing sense and power out the back and adding a bluetooth TTL bridge to allow for wireless control.

[Mr. Scram]

Picked up a for parts/as is BK 9310 on eBay, for dirt cheap. Mainly because I wanted a three channel supply, plus I wanted a new project to try to fix. As they indicated a single channel worked, I figured  there was a decent chance to revive the device. While they wanted way too much, I was able negotiate them down to $150 shipped. Received the item and while notably damaged (stand was cracked, knob and bezel missing, and dirty as all get out) after resetting the settings it worked perfectly. A new stand, bezel, and knob set me back $35 plus shipping and now it looks great! Well worth the $180 that I paid IMHO.

Next upgrades, routing sense and power out the back and adding a bluetooth TTL bridge to allow for wireless control.

Nice score! Does BK sell spare parts like that?

[PedroDaGr8]

Picked up a for parts/as is BK 9310 on eBay, for dirt cheap. Mainly because I wanted a three channel supply, plus I wanted a new project to try to fix. As they indicated a single channel worked, I figured  there was a decent chance to revive the device. While they wanted way too much, I was able negotiate them down to $150 shipped. Received the item and while notably damaged (stand was cracked, knob and bezel missing, and dirty as all get out) after resetting the settings it worked perfectly. A new stand, bezel, and knob set me back $35 plus shipping and now it looks great! Well worth the $180 that I paid IMHO.

Next upgrades, routing sense and power out the back and adding a bluetooth TTL bridge to allow for wireless control.

Nice score! Does BK sell spare parts like that?

They do! That's where I got my parts from. In fact, the purchasing agent was VERY helpful considering I didn't even know the actual part numbers and they had to go by rough descriptions. For the stand, I ended up sending a picture so they could know exactly what I meant, turns out they call it a handle.   Considering this instrument has been End-Of-Life'd (replaced long ago by the 9130B), I expected to be SOL on parts. So the fact that they even had everything in stock was a nice surprise.

Honestly, even better, the prices were very reasonable in my opinion. The tilt stand/handle was $20, the blue rubber bezel/surround was $10, and the knob was $3. The only downside was shipping added on another $10, but it was FedEx and only took a couple days to get to my place.

 

[GerryBags]

Wow, well done B&K! If only more companies had that attitude to keeping their OOP gear in service. Especially with TE, these companies must accumulate masses of parts for those models which could still make them money if they didn't just offload them in job lots, and the sort of people who are going to be trying to fix up old gear are highly unlikely to be in a position to buy a new model instead. It's a different market that could be served by a simple warehousing operation from anywhere.

[bd139]

Have a look at Keysight. I bought a knob for a 22 year old power supply recently.

[Specmaster]

That's exactly what want to hear for all things regardless of what it is, that's a company worth supporting.

Have a look at Keysight. I bought a knob for a 22 year old owner supply recently.

From mobile device so predictive text might have struck again [emoji83]

[PedroDaGr8]

Wow, well done B&K! If only more companies had that attitude to keeping their OOP gear in service. Especially with TE, these companies must accumulate masses of parts for those models which could still make them money if they didn't just offload them in job lots, and the sort of people who are going to be trying to fix up old gear are highly unlikely to be in a position to buy a new model instead. It's a different market that could be served by a simple warehousing operation from anywhere.

Fully agree, this helps me keep these instruments out landfills (and allowed me to get an instrument higher in quality than I could afford new).

Have a look at Keysight. I bought a knob for a 22 year old power supply recently.

Different tier both in quality and price. I would EXPECT this kind of thing from Keysight. On the other hand, considering that BK Precision is a slightly lower tier, this is instead a pleasant surprise. Plus the reasonable price is great too!

[bd139]

Crazy price alert. 1GHz HP scope with probes £60!

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F332643645817

I’m not interested in it but that’s worth a few quid more than it’s being sold for!

[Specmaster]

somebody please buy it and save me from myself.