The Electrician;Another thing I notice is that the numbers for sweeps/second on the Anritsu don't make sense to me. I set it up to look at a local TV station (a digital signal here in the U.S.) at around 600 MHz. Using a 5 MHz span and 10 kHz RBW, the instrument reported a sweep time of 900 mS, but the update rate on the display is much faster than that; I would estimate about 50 mS. I see this behavior constantly; the unit is much faster than it indicates. They must mean something different than what I would expect by the term "sweep time". The FSH4 doesn't behave like this. It reports a sweep time that is consistent with what you see on the display.
I just had the chance to audition a Anritsu MT8212E (I believe). Surely not what I was looking for, but it gave me a basic feel. Among other things, one thing I was looking for was the lowest sweep speed it could do. Not having a manual for this (the rep was suppose to have a 2712), we (both of us) were perplexed with the readout of sweep speeds. I had the unit in manual RBW, VBW & what I thought was a manual sweep setting, but it still had a mind of it's own. It let me enter slower or faster speed speeds, but it would then display what it wanted to. usually some odd number; 83, 167ms etc.
On top of that, when trying to enter in another number, the display went into some other setting, what appeared to be a 1 sec sweep even those the readout was around 100ms.
I'll report back on mine and his findings as he did contact Anritsu for this and other questions.
One thing I surely don't like is their manuals, they are terrible. They do
not show a complete Menu tree. Only for the "File" and "System" menu entries. Nothing for all the other 'important' operational entries. You know, the ones that are used all the time.
The fastest speed it did show was 50ms depending on settings.