OK, as promised. Not as satisfying as I'd hoped, but still some usable and useful additions to the shelf. We got to the hamfest about 5 minutes before doors-open, and I had to make the decision upon entering: left, or right? Many a TEA story has been told of the results of making that critical choice. Happily, I chose wisely... I think. The entire exhibition hall was crammed with vendors (guessing at least 300) but I managed to run the gauntlet and find the "scores" in about 30 minutes. My friends, who had much more modest goals, circled the tables for about 2 hours before calling it quits. The result: nothing earth-shattering, but I'm convinced that two of the items I found wouldn't have lasted long in today's crowd. All the multimeters had disappeared by the time I made a second pass through the tables.
This would have been a good day for you Tek 475 lovers; I saw at least three in good working order, ranging from about $50 up. There were also a couple of HP synthesized signal generators and some other RF gear, mostly counters. One Commodore PET, and a couple of Franklin Aces. Many Windoze laptops.
Far fewer stacks of old beater gear than I expected, but a couple of well-preserved Hallicrafters S-38s caught my eye. And of course, the requisite table full of air variable capacitors and hand-wound matching coils.
Definitely the best gear selection of any fest since summer, though. Now, the rundown....
Fluke 8600A: Yes, I already had one - you got a problem with that?
Just a great little all-purpose meter. This one seems to have some crud on the switches, and ACV reads wildly inaccurate - which may be switches too. It's an Option 01; the NiCds are shot, of course, but the little plastic battery holder prevented any of the electrolyte from getting onto the board. It's very clean inside and will be about 1 kilo lighter once I extract the batteries. It still had the original Fluke cal sticker from 1974.
HP 3470 system: I remember our lab having a couple of these modular instruments. Very compact for a HP DMM; this one is the 4.5 digit display together with the 34702A non-current measuring DMM module. It also has dirty switches and inaccurate ACV readings, but I doubt there's anything badly wrong inside. It's missing the rear feet.
Wavetek 182A: Since Wavetek had a local facility, every lab owned some of their instruments for the bench. I'd always wanted a "real" Wavetek signal generator with a dial, for quick checking audio gear; just a bit less hassle than setting the frequency on an AWG. This one seems to mostly work, with (all together now!) dirty switches causing the range and waveform selection to have some issues. I'm not thrilled with whoever carved a number into the front panel with a pen, but at least they didn't obscure any of the legends with scribbles. Something tells me this one was not calibrated.
I'm betting all of these will need some power supply work, considering their age; but the fact that they are all operational is good.
Now the thing which I still can't believe; how much did this nice little stack of gear cost? Out the door with a complimentary cloth bag for carrying them, total cost $32.