I am tuning 3 Sinclair pass notch cavities at 146.37MHz using the Rigol rsa5065N with tracking generator. The cavities have a 120dB notch. I also have a Rohde&Schwarz SML 02 signal generator. I first used thee signal generator to tune the pass and notch frequencies. I could easily see the notch signal about 10dB above the noise floor with 0 dBm feeding the cavities.
Now I turned on the tracking generator , also set at 0dBm signal level. The display jumped up to -100dBm as I sweep the notch at 100khz span and the signal out of range shows on the screen. At this point I hooked up my tiny spectrum analyzer to the tracking generator directly through a 20 db attenuator and noticed and notices spikes randomly appearing in the 2MHz span along withe the desired sweep signal. I set the span to zero and the spikes moved around but the 146.37 MHz carrier was clean and stable otherwise.
It looks like the tracking generator has a problem. I experienced the same phenomenon when I tuned some pass reject cavities for 222.32MHz repeater receiver. Thank you 73…Frank
I contacted Rigol sent my unit back to them and it has the same issue. Could someone with an rsa5500 take a look at your tracking generator signal.