Re: Newbie: Spectrum Analyzer Software

What a load of bullshit! Yes, you need to know what you are doing. Its the same when using any piece of test equipment. On the other hand, if you think you need "an engineering degree" to understand the instrument, your are a low grade moron. There are a whole of a lot of S/As on benches used by production, test and service techs. Last place I worked the ratio was over 10 to 1 for production & test vs design, and it was an engineering to order company. A true production plant would probably have even more.

Gee I'm not sure who you are replying to, but cell phones? I never worked with them. In fact, I never called back the place that offered me a job repairing them.

I worked on the military radios at Cincinnati Electronics, (PRC-77, GRC-106). I did two way radio repair, CATV headend work, and designed CATV system extensions. I designed a very simple cable system to interconnect the community loops between different CATV companies. The standard design was either two HSP's, or pairs of demodulators and modulators, but my design used a single HSP (Heterodyne Signal Processor) that was mounted in a large NEMA cabinet on a CG&E power pole in Cincinnati, Ohio. 120 VAC power, and two ¾ inch 75 Ohm hard lines entered the box. A four way splitter was used to connect the input and output of the HSP to the two hard lines to connect a sub split system to a mid split system. Everyone insisted it wouldn't work, but it did, and the levels were within ½ db when it was turned on.

I spent a number of years at Microdyne working as both a production and an engineering tech. I wrote a lot of test procedures for the RCB-2000 DSP based telemetry system, and updated the test procedures for the older products, including the 1200, 1400, and 700 series.

I designed and built some of the RCB-2000 test fixtures as well as configuring a system to install and test the RCB-2000 on the in plant computer network. A tech in final test could call engineering and give them the serial number. The engineers or programers could log into the RCB2000 to verify that it had the proper software installed for the individual customers specifications.

Some people have no problem walking up to a new piece of equipment and can figure out how to use it in a couple minutes. On the other hand, there are others who can NEVER be taught how to do some simple jobs.

I worked part time in a TV shop while I was in Jr. high school. I used and repaired ½ inch reel to reel B&W video tape equipment in the late '60s while I was in high school.

I was drafted in Aug. 1972, and the US Army awarded me a broadcast engineer rating while I was in basic training. Then they sent me off to repair CATV, microwave relay equipment (CARS), AM & VHF TV broadcast equipment, as well as a few cranky Korean war vintage radar systems when the RADAR section was short handed.

I have absolutely no formal training in electronics but I have studied the field on my own since I turned 13.

You have your opinions, and I have mine. I have worked with a few really good engineers, and with plenty who threw together a haywire prototype, tossed the notes to drafting, and refused to admit any mistakes, including one where they signed off the design of a $400 custom chassis. The drawing backwards, so it we it was a mirror image when it arrived at his desk to assemble the pair of prototypes.

A degree means You SHOULD know what you are doing, but it doesn't guarantee you know anything. This applies to engineers, doctors, or any other field you can think of.

I can only remember one time I ever needed a manual to figure out a function on a piece of test equipment, and then when I found the right part of the manual it was wrong. I had to configure a HP network analyzer to use a Think jet printer with an IEEE -488 (HPIB) interface. It took a little while to find that it was in a different menu than the one specified in the manual. After I figured it out, Design engineering heard about it and came out to the test department to ask how to make it work for them.