RLC bridge

Thing is, that tends to snowball. "There was this engineering dude, somewhere from where the Ponderosa Ranch used to be, who told us how we can save buckets of money in production ..."

Right, that's who ate IBM's lunch. IMHO it is only a matter of time until it'll happen to the big lab equipment folks as well.

Hameg brings back some memories. At my first job I 'had' an analog Hameg. Shake well before use otherwise it wouldn't work. OTOH it had a neat feature I've never seen on any other scope: vertical overrange indicator. This allowed to notice invisible narrow pulses.

I've seen the Rohde&Schwarz scopes in advertisements but I wonder what they are thinking. R&S is known for radio and other HF stuff. Not something 'simple' like a scope.

Hmm, this doesn't look like a very usefull product. A TDS820 from Ebay will do exactly the same. Thats 20 year old technology!

So? A TDS820 in good condition sets you back at least $2000. But most of all it's big and heavy. I prefer stuff I place put into my carry-on bag and not even feel it's in there. That's why I like my little USB spectrum analyzer. It's inexpensive, light, small and uses only about 2W of power. Try any of that with a boat anchor :-)

Sure, but I'm Mycroft to your Sherlock. Staying in one place is a Good Thing. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I have a HM-207 from the 70's. It doesn't even have a trigger yet, just a "synchronizer knob". I have repaired countless TV sets with it and it's really gotten good use. Never let me down, still have it, still works. Here it is:

I guess that's why they bought Hameg.

Ok, I also love the fact that I can work out of my own office most of the time. But there often comes a point where a client gets seriously stuck and they can't get off the ice on their own. Then it's southwest.com and hotels.com and off to the aeropuerto.

Worst case is you arrive somewhere and the rental gear hasn't come in yet or became damaged in shipping. With PC-driven equipment in your pilot's briefcase that just doesn't happen.

Surprisingly the super-small spectrum analyzer did not turn heads as much as a cheapo Durofix electric screwdriver I had with me, $15 at Costco. It almost looks like a pistol. Engineers said "I want one of those!". This one:

I know that's called a screwdriver, but cordless drills are specifically prohibited from carry-on luggage, and if you put a hex shank bit into it, that's a cordless drill. Since drills without bits are specifically prohibited, they could certainly take that away from you.

It's more than $15, but I really like this little guy:

The clutch works really nicely, you can run dozens of screws in quite quickly with no danger of over or under-tightening them, plus it's small enough to get into tight spaces, light (0.9lb) , and comes with two batteries. It gets plenty of use.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

On a sunny day (Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:39:21 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

I never liked Hameg. Did not look cool either. I have a Trio CS1562A from the seventies, dual channel 10 MHz, it has several trigger modes, especially TV H and V trigger, I have repaired over a thousand teafees with it, and still use it almost every day,

If Rohde&Schwarz bought Hameg feels like Nokia buying Trolltech... LOL.

$2000 is way too much. What kind of warranty would you expect from the seller? If something breaks then he will just say 'Well its 20 years old so what do you expect?'. There are several on Ebay but they are not getting sold.

Anyway, I've replaced all the CRTs in my equipment with TFT screens. That saves about 5kg each and I have color instead of monochrome.

Maybe I should have bought that but when I asked the people here where a bit sceptic :-)

Tek had an overscan indicator as early as the 545A hits the market. But that was a "slow" one, not showing fast transients, only trace was "off screen".

Jorgen

Does it have variable-speed drive?

I'd really want a clutch. :-)

Not as small, but these are really nice:

(There's also an impact driver and drill in the same form-factor.)

This client is in Silicon Valley so I could drive. I'd never take that on a flight because it looks like a gun.

Yes, Hitachi makes good stuff. All the way up to big excavators :-)

Nope, fixed but not very fast so that t has enough torque.

What they screwed up is the reverse switch in the handle. I regularly hit it because my hands are a bit to big for this tool I guess.

I've never really missed that. I have a retrofit clutch for my electric drill that I haven't used in 20 years or more. That drill is fixed speed non-reversible yet I have used it to insert several pounds of deck screws. After a while you know exactly when to let go of the switch wo it's torqued just right.

Yeah, but 250 bucks is a bit much for something that flies around at a job site and can become broken.

A new USB box comes with a warranty. Typically one year.

Maybe because they are not so modern anymore and there's USB stuff?

I remember that thread. But I bought it anyhow and it has paid for itself already. One has to keep in mind that it is in essence just an SDR and that mirrors are calculated out instead of filtered out. That comes with some disadvantages. OTOH these analyzers can do stuff that boat anchors can't. For example, a single-sideband audio listen-in feature. Super useful and fast when chasing faint noises. Things like that in a regular benchtop analyzer usually require one to plunk down a five digit sum.

day,

Ok, then tell us: What scope can rival a Hameg HM-2008 digital/analog mixed scope? And here I mean price versus performance.

There was a project in a hobby magazine to add that to old tube type scopes, in the '60s or '70s.

of

bag

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ zum Flugzeug Spanglish? Or are you not Joerg?

produce,

than

to

the

so

for

and

user-interface-wise.

Their stuff is pretty common in University graduate Chemistry and Physics labs as well. They have taken business from HP, Tek, SRS, and others = over the years. They are starting to become a bit of a TRW though.

?-)