Well, after raising two very fine daughters who both turned out to be gifted in fuzzy subjects such as languages and history and bunk like that, my son is showing signs of technical aptitude and interest.
Therefore, I'm putting together a lowish-budget home lab off ebay, with an eye to doing some Jacob's ladders or Tesla coils or stuff like that there, with maybe an electro-optical thing now and again, such as a machine to detect deer and hit them with paintballs. ;)
So far, I have:
Tek 475A 250 MHz scope with DMM;
2x HP 6286 20V, 10A power supplies;1x HP 8013B 50 MHz pulser;
HP 400A AC Voltmeter;
Various Simpson meters and Fluke DVMs and such like.
Enough probes and test leads for now.
I already owned the DVM, but so far the rest have cost me about $400 all told. Some of this stuff I had to get my second line manager's approval on, when I bought it for work long ago! Nice old test equipment is monstrous cheap.
I'm bidding on various HP universal counters and Exact function generators, which I like. Haven't got enough dough for a spectrum analyzer, unfortunately. Remaining budget is ~$400.
So which of your favourite old instruments have I forgotten?
Cheers,
Phil