Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Strange machine with a "repair opportunity". Looks like it might contain a 7-decade KVD.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Guildline-9975-Current-Comparator-Resistance-Bridge-Galvanometer-115-230V-50VA/173903985031

^{And it escaped from !!!} 

   Time for the month of Fleet Recalibration to begin. The long overdue twosome have returned and my Agilent 34461A has become reborn a Keysight 34461A thanks to a firmware issue.

Celebratory Beer being opened because it is 5pm while I decide on a fleet recalibration order    EDIT: Now settled to within 5PPM and closing it seems 

So... did they exchange the entire unit, or just necessary components and front bezel to make it "Keysight"? I guess either way it's an "upgrade"; and not like you didn't pay for it with that bill from HPAK Calibration. 

One of my colleagues bought a $500 golf driver at xmas and fucked it up already for example.

Well, there's so many fails there let me see if I can count them.

Fail 1: spending $500 on a golf driver.
Fail 2: How do you fuck up a driver?
Fail 3: Golf itself. Dumb game. Chasing a little white ball across thousands of yards of green grass holds no appeal to me.
Fail 4: The ridiculous outfits some golfers wear.
I could go on but I'll stop there. 

Drivers are hollow and easy to ruin if you're careless or incompetent. Few sports make any sense when you look at them factually.

Yeah, especially calling Golf a "sport". When you see fatasses fatter than me engaged in it, you have to question the alleged "athleticism" required to make it "sport". 

@med: agree totally. The guy also bought a golf cart because he is too lazy to do the exercise bit as well. TBH you can usually divide golf stick whackers into two groups: 1) people who actually like golf (there aren't many) ... 2) people who like to tell everyone that they play golf (lots) for the status. The dude above is a class 2.

I don't get it myself. We used to live next to a golf club when I was a kid and we had a whippet dog called benjy. If you wanted a laugh you'd let it out through the back fence and onto the golf course and it'd run around in circles like lightning stealing all the balls and pissing off the golfers. It'd come back by itself when it had caused chaos and wanted some food. That was far more fun!

   I REALLY like your perverse sense of humor.  I do hope someday to enjoy it in person, my friend.

mnem
“Golf has too much walking to be a good game, and just enough game to spoil a good walk.” ~ Sir Harold Leon Wilson

[mnementh]

I miss living in a world with Robin Williams and Douglas Adams; two of the most naturally funny people who ever walked its surface.

mnem
"Golf: You hit a little white ball as far as you can, and if you find it the same day you have won.” ~ WC Fields (Attrib ??)

[mnementh]

1) We ALL take our turn being the ham-fisted gorilla at one time or another. 

      

Twisting the knife, eh?   

mnem
That's okay. We'll be neighbors soon enough. 

[worsthorse]

Is anyone else going to the huge Dayton hamfest this weekend?  I'm only going on Friday due to an overbooked weekend, but I'm hoping to have some fun browsing the outside flea market - haven't been there in a few years...

I am, in fact, making the pilgrimage. I will be at FDIM and, I imagine, at the flea market on Friday. I don't really have a plan other than showing up and seeing what happens.  Right now I am in Denver airport, waiting for my delayed leg to Dayton, so I probably won't get to the hotel until midnight.

I haven't shaved for a couple of days, got my hobo clothes, a bag full of badges with my call sign on them, my Tektronix ball cap, and an empty duffle, so I am ready for anything. 

Did you remember not to shower for a couple of days, your 12 HTs, dayglow vest and hat with antenna farm?  If not, you are not making the proper impression. 

First impressions... the FDIM crowd tends toward shaven, showered, and what we used to call polo shirts, though the hobo contingent is definitely here. At sixty, I am definitely on the young end of the age scale.  Interesting to be in a room where everyone knows what EMRFD and SSDRA stand for and where most spent a lot more time building rigs rather than operating them.

[0culus]

Is anyone else going to the huge Dayton hamfest this weekend?  I'm only going on Friday due to an overbooked weekend, but I'm hoping to have some fun browsing the outside flea market - haven't been there in a few years...

I am, in fact, making the pilgrimage. I will be at FDIM and, I imagine, at the flea market on Friday. I don't really have a plan other than showing up and seeing what happens.  Right now I am in Denver airport, waiting for my delayed leg to Dayton, so I probably won't get to the hotel until midnight.

I haven't shaved for a couple of days, got my hobo clothes, a bag full of badges with my call sign on them, my Tektronix ball cap, and an empty duffle, so I am ready for anything. 

Did you remember not to shower for a couple of days, your 12 HTs, dayglow vest and hat with antenna farm?  If not, you are not making the proper impression. 

First impressions... the FDIM crowd tends toward shaven, showered, and what we used to call polo shirts, though the hobo contingent is definitely here. At sixty, I am definitely on the young end of the age scale.  Interesting to be in a room where everyone knows what EMRFD and SSDRA stand for and where most spent a lot more time building rigs rather than operating them.

I'm under 30, and when I go to hamfest type events the old guys all want a piece of me because they get so excited about people half their age being interested in the hobby. 

[bd139]

Well, no... when I said " 'Oh, fu-u-u-u...' type bodges" I meant the self-inflicted kind, not manufacturer-created. 

There's lots of good reasons to NOT respin a board; I find it hard to believe they're still selling from a load of boards they bought 18 years ago. 

Could be for simple conformity: so you can sell replacement boards for repair parts and not have to worry about which revision you send out, because none of your "production" boards have any significant differences. If you have to make that happen with a SOIC breakout board, I feel that is a legitimate reason. I find a lot of this in hobbyist and laboratory stuff.

Another reason could be that the guy who actually designed the board and has the files to respin it left the company and didn't leave anything but the Gerbers, etc. or worse, went silent key a decade ago, and nobody actually has the originals.

I don't know many engineers possessed of the sheer perversity to re-create an editable version of somebody else's project so they can "continue that person's work". Most will simply design "rework kits" to keep that project afloat until they can get paid for the next major revision, which they plan to do from scratch. Job security, baby. 

Yes, I know you can import Gerbers and work with the resultant project file to some extent; but even in modern stuff like Altium it's still a PITA and you don't KNOW it got every circuit RIGHT unless you compare/draw them yourself.

Or maybe it's as I originally surmised: You have an established product, the people who want it like the fact it's stayed essentially the same for decades, and you can't be arsed. Especially now that you have the K3+ to sell to the touchscreen crowd. 

mnem
 

Ahh that makes sense now. They are manufacturer supplied bodges. At lunch today I sorted them out.

So first we have the SMD adapter bodge. Very neat:



Now we have the extra capacitors bodge. Not so neat. Haven't decided if I'm going to clean the board or not yet.

[med6753]

I would leave the bodges as is. Adds character. 

[mnementh]

I'd put 0.100" pins on that SOIC breakout and socket the PCB, unless it's a frequency-sensitive application that needs legs absolutely as short as possible.

The caps... meh. Seen too many just like that to give a f***. 

mnem
Fresh out.

[mnementh]

FU**ING CAULKING GUN!!!   


mnem
*Off to Homeowner Hell*

[GregDunn]

Is anyone else going to the huge Dayton hamfest this weekend?  I'm only going on Friday due to an overbooked weekend, but I'm hoping to have some fun browsing the outside flea market - haven't been there in a few years...

I am, in fact, making the pilgrimage. I will be at FDIM and, I imagine, at the flea market on Friday. I don't really have a plan other than showing up and seeing what happens.  Right now I am in Denver airport, waiting for my delayed leg to Dayton, so I probably won't get to the hotel until midnight.

I haven't shaved for a couple of days, got my hobo clothes, a bag full of badges with my call sign on them, my Tektronix ball cap, and an empty duffle, so I am ready for anything. 

Did you remember not to shower for a couple of days, your 12 HTs, dayglow vest and hat with antenna farm?  If not, you are not making the proper impression. 

First impressions... the FDIM crowd tends toward shaven, showered, and what we used to call polo shirts, though the hobo contingent is definitely here. At sixty, I am definitely on the young end of the age scale.  Interesting to be in a room where everyone knows what EMRFD and SSDRA stand for and where most spent a lot more time building rigs rather than operating them.

I'm under 30, and when I go to hamfest type events the old guys all want a piece of me because they get so excited about people half their age being interested in the hobby. 

It is sad to see that the average age of attendees is steadily climbing - much like SF gatherings at conventions.  The last couple of years the commercial vendors have actually been far younger than the attendees and private table owners - a few people still have their kids along either as runners or just to keep an eye on them, but it's hard to tell whether it's making any kind of impression on them at all.

Last time at Dayton it was still a lot of fun just gawking at all the interesting things people brought while scanning for bargains.  That's almost as much fun as actually finding the bargain buried under a bunch of trash...

[mnementh]

FU**ING THANK YOU CAULKING GUN!!!     


mnem
*Off to Homeowner Hell*   * NOT TODAY! *

Well... that was more than a little bit *~ Twilight Zone ~*...

... I had just slammed the [POST] button on that spot of frustration and was rummaging around my bench for my keys when I spied a little corner of green metal on the shelf right by my foot. Moved a stack of recycled bubble mailers, and there it was. AND it had JUST enough good caulk left in it to finish the job... not even half a click more than absolutely necessary.   

AND my rubber gloves lasted JUST until I'd finished the job before disintegrating.

AND get this: I was so frustrated after searching more than half an hour for that caulking gun that I forgot to test the damn thing before I sealed it all up...

AND IT STILL WORKED!!!   

So... do I pack my tools away, brew a pot of tea and wait quietly for the end of the world to come this afternoon, or do I go out and buy myself a lottery ticket before the caulking dries on my fuel pump repair? 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

mnem
*Retail Therapy*

[med6753]

Never heard of MPJA. I'll have to check them out. 

[kj7e]

Since Eveready No.763 22.5v batteries are not exactly common or cheap, I build a 20v regulated supply for the 427a.












Also, all of the AE caps have been replaced, some dirty contacts on the range switch needs to be cleaned yet. But everything seems to work as it should.

[worsthorse]

Hopefully this is a good omen for my upcoming unobtanium hunt...



My friend from the GQRP club delivered three parts I won in a drawing a couple of months ago... two 9MHz crystal filters and an SL6640, photographed here in old timey black and white in keeping with their age.   

For the RF types, Hans Summer gave a good talk on the QSX and some of the interesting choices he is making to keep the cost down and the performance up. Ashar Farhan revealed two new projects, an SDR core (I am still trying to figure out just what that means) and what he called the Antduino, which is sortof a spectrum analyzer. More to follow on these, probably in an FDIM thread over in the RF section...

[Specmaster]

(SNIP)
If I hit the lottery, I will come across a stash of Miller slug tuned coils, crystal filters, and dual gate MOSFETs that everyone else has somehow missed.  Well that plus hoping the Elecraft is running a sale so I can give in on my newly re-energized K2 envy...

eBay auction: #273843736218

Wanders off stage-left, whistling innocently... 

Are these "Oh, fu-u-u-u..." type bodges or "We've been using this design for 2 decades, but still haven't gotten around to updating the board for modern components..." type bodges?

There are no really oh fuck ones. Nothing that scares me anyway. So far there are two TH capacitors that need to be soldered across pins on the rear of the board to shape the keying waveform. That really should have been done with a board respin. The other things are parts availability so the MC1350 IF amps and SA602 mixers are now only available in SOIC rather than the DIP footprints. Rather than them respin the boards (I assume they bought a fuck ton of these years ago) they actually provide each IC in a little antistatic bag pre-mounted carrier board neatly packed with an A4 sheet of paper explaining how to mount it and some 22 AWG solid wire or header pins for mounting it.  They do this because you can sub your own DIP MC1350/SA612 in if you want (I might do this as I have enough of both of them).

Well, no... when I said " 'Oh, fu-u-u-u...' type bodges" I meant the self-inflicted kind, not manufacturer-created. 

There's lots of good reasons to NOT respin a board; I find it hard to believe they're still selling from a load of boards they bought 18 years ago. 

Could be for simple conformity: so you can sell replacement boards for repair parts and not have to worry about which revision you send out, because none of your "production" boards have any significant differences. If you have to make that happen with a SOIC breakout board, I feel that is a legitimate reason. I find a lot of this in hobbyist and laboratory stuff.

Another reason could be that the guy who actually designed the board and has the files to respin it left the company and didn't leave anything but the Gerbers, etc. or worse, went silent key a decade ago, and nobody actually has the originals.

I don't know many engineers possessed of the sheer perversity to re-create an editable version of somebody else's project so they can "continue that person's work". Most will simply design "rework kits" to keep that project afloat until they can get paid for the next major revision, which they plan to do from scratch. Job security, baby. 

Yes, I know you can import Gerbers and work with the resultant project file to some extent; but even in modern stuff like Altium it's still a PITA and you don't KNOW it got every circuit RIGHT unless you compare/draw them yourself.

Or maybe it's as I originally surmised: You have an established product, the people who want it like the fact it's stayed essentially the same for decades, and you can't be arsed. Especially now that you have the K3+ to sell to the touchscreen crowd. 

mnem
 

Wow, I counted about 20 bleeding crystals on these circuit boards and maybe more could be hidden beneath those daughter boards as well? Interestingly, the seller of that K2 also states that they may not ship to the UK anyway so that's not going to wind up bd is it, if that was what you said it for than that's a fail 

It does however look to be a real good solid piece of kit and it would be almost impossible to produce something like that without the odd botch here and there. 

[Specmaster]

@med: agree totally. The guy also bought a golf cart because he is too lazy to do the exercise bit as well. TBH you can usually divide golf stick whackers into two groups: 1) people who actually like golf (there aren't many) ... 2) people who like to tell everyone that they play golf (lots) for the status. The dude above is a class 2.

I don't get it myself. We used to live next to a golf club when I was a kid and we had a whippet dog called benjy. If you wanted a laugh you'd let it out through the back fence and onto the golf course and it'd run around in circles like lightning stealing all the balls and pissing off the golfers. It'd come back by itself when it had caused chaos and wanted some food. That was far more fun!

Even greater fun could be had by training Benjy to bring the balls back home and then you collect them and sell them back to the golfers by the bucket load 

[med6753]

Mom called. The flowers were just delivered and they are beautiful. She said they were just in time because the flowers from my brother were starting to wilt. So I guess my screw up with the delivery dates worked out after all and I'm back in good graces with the family Matriarch.

Anybody want to buy a doghouse? I no longer need it. 

[0culus]

Can I store test equipment in it? 

[med6753]

Can I store test equipment in it? 

You sure can! It even has a front porch! 

[mnementh]

EFFING NEWEGG!!!

https://youtu.be/naIeGg66Vcg

I was actually looking at this monitor vs a couple other 24-27" 144/165Hz monitors around the $400 price point back when I was rebuilding my old gamer rig; ultimately I just couldn't make myself spend that kind of money.

Now NewEgg puts it on their ShellShocker for $309, and I have a store credit that brings it down to $270 shipped.  Looks like wifey is gonna have to pay for Anniversary Dinner; I just spent my Anniversary AND Father's Day present. 

mnem
Thanks, Victor. 

[bd139]

Good K2 progress tonight. Found a mechanical problem though which will need modification. Their replacement encoder isn't particularly well engineered unfortunately.



Front:



Now the encoder assembly as originally designed fits nice and flush on the panel. That encoder was discontinued so they replaced it with a bourns one and board which emulates the original and has a K3 knob on it. Knob is nice - weighted. But the encoder wont sit flush. I temporary bodged it on with a washer on the inside on the main shaft but this fouls the PCB behind it. So off to screwfix tomorrow to pick up some stainless washers and pad it out. That should give me another 1.5mm.



You can't win 'em all

Edit: found an M10 washer in the junk box and reamed it out to 10.35mm so it sits on the encoder step on the shaft and that solved the problem. Couldn't not solve this problem before I went to bed! 00:27 here. Going to bed.

[mnementh]

Never heard of MPJA. I'll have to check them out. 

That 200MHz probe is the Hong Kong Texas Co. Model 200/I probe. I've been looking for them for a while after reading that some of their probes are rebranded by HPAK for some of their scopes. I probably paid a premium price for it at $18.95, but figured I could live widdat as it's coming from a US reseller.

Now all I need is something to measure that can show the difference between it and my other cheap probes. 

mnem
 

[VK5RC]

I think kits that go together without a problem or two lack 'personality' - this way you will 'own' that K2.
Rob
Re caulking guns - about 5yrs ago the hardware stores started giving away caulking gun tips, it was such a good idea, I am so less reluctant to use the stuff now I buy more!

[Housedad]

FU**ING THANK YOU CAULKING GUN!!!     


mnem
*Off to Homeowner Hell*   * NOT TODAY! *

Well... that was more than a little bit *~ Twilight Zone ~*...

... I had just slammed the [POST] button on that spot of frustration and was rummaging around my bench for my keys when I spied a little corner of green metal on the shelf right by my foot. Moved a stack of recycled bubble mailers, and there it was. AND it had JUST enough good caulk left in it to finish the job... not even half a click more than absolutely necessary.   

AND my rubber gloves lasted JUST until I'd finished the job before disintegrating.

AND get this: I was so frustrated after searching more than half an hour for that caulking gun that I forgot to test the damn thing before I sealed it all up...

AND IT STILL WORKED!!!   

So... do I pack my tools away, brew a pot of tea and wait quietly for the end of the world to come this afternoon, or do I go out and buy myself a lottery ticket before the caulking dries on my fuel pump repair? 

mnem
 

Nope.  That job is done.  What vehicle did you have to cut a hole in the floor for access?  Engineers that do that stuff to us should be throttled slowly and painfully.  But not terminally.