My name is Fred, i'm a HAM, pa4tim. 49 years old. My main intrest is in analog design, (micro) measurements, calibration, component behaviour and network analysis. I'm a fan of Jim Williams and Bob Pease. I like reading a lot about analog desing and do many ( often unusual) measurement experiments. They vary from measuring the impedance of water up to trying to measure the skin effect on a bare wire, the complex impedance of batterys, but my favourites are capacitors. I can and have measured every aspect from them. Build my own fF meter and the next step will be aF.
I'm a member of some instrument groups on Yahoo, like the HP, GR , marconi, R&S and Tekscopes groups. Also very active on a Dutch forum called Circuits Online.
I collect, build, design and restore measusement gear.
I can measure uOhm to pOhm, pA tot A, aF to F, pH to H, nV to kV ect.
I have severals anlysers like 3 VNA's, several SA's, noiseanalyser ect
lots of scopes ( mini and maxi, 500 KHz tot 5 GHz) most of the big ones Tek mainframes. My only modern one is a 350MHz Hameg DSO ( my pride and joy after the disaster called Rigol DS1102 )
And about > 30 meters ( lost count) electrometers, spotgalvanometers, multimeters, powermeters, nuldetectors, ect, the oldest VTVM a 1948 GR1800 the newest DMM a Keithley 2000. Small simple analog meters from WW2 to things like simpson, unigor and AVO, digital from old 2,5 digit flukes to 7,5 digit solartron.
Lots of probes ( hi-Z, active, passive, current, HV ect)
Calibration gear ( guildline standard cells, 5 fluke and Philips calibrators, 3 kelvin varley dividers, ESI and GR standards)
Other stuff like pulsegenerators ( upto 250 MHz, sub-nano, HV) RF and function generators, curvetracer, powersuplys, lcr, esr meters
All sorts of bridges, most of then GR. (1620,1608,1650, marconi, boonton, HP)
One thing I must say, and not make friends with it I think:
I think am one of the few here that does not idolise cheap Chinese junk. I have not read all topics so i probably have the wrong picture , but that seems to be the only "nasty" tendency here. Lots of "fights" about which junk is the best, often based on nothing other then good looks or nice menus or compared to other junk ( sorry to say it like this) Probably because i am spoiled rotten working with quality stuff. ( old and new) i want to see in a test how accurate it is, what it does under changing temperature, or with half empty battery, or the noise level, channel separation, dead time, ect ect. Not if there is a dot instead of an invered cursor in a menu, if the pcb looks nice and if itis in a gift box ect.
For instance, the holy Rigol I had for two years. The probes went in the trashcsn after three months, the selectbutton worked half of the time after one and a half year and after it lost its triggerlevel knob i gave it away to a student with no budget. It just fell off like leaves in the authum, no wonder, a flimsy hollow shaft in a even thinner sleeve. Just plain old crap ( besides a high moise level, inaccurat measurements, the complete failure to capture runts, the jitter, the distorted waveforms in memory , things like Tr or amplitude that changes if you move the trace ect
Oh, be warned:
I can not give short answers
they allways turn out a bit too long. Especially about scopes and multimeters and do
Do not mention the words ESR, capacitance or ESL in witch case i get over excited.
I came here after seeing some of steves videoblogs and alltough I have not seen all of them , I like them. He says what he thinks. Then while looking for info while repairing a PM2811 PSU i found this forum and decides to register.
So here I am.
Fred, PA4TIM.
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