I have an HP 8590d SA. I also have a Siglent 2042x arb gen.
The SA has a sweep trigger in. The gen has a sweep trigger out.
I figure I should be able to cobble a poor man's tracking gen.
I set the generator to sweep linearly from one known frequency to another, at a specific sweep rate.
I set the SA to trigger externally, and to sweep at the same speed.
So this kinda works. If I set my start and stop freq for my SA sweep to the same as the generator, I get close. I then fiddle with the center span freq until the level of the trace peaks. My SA has only been on for 1/2 hour, and I've learned it's reference takes a few hours to settle down, so I figure it shouldn't surprise me that the freqs don't match exactly.
What bugs me is that I can't seem to go below 30 KHz RBW before things start looking messed up. I'm currently sweeping from 1 MHz to 1.5MHz on the generator, with a 30 ms sweep. I have the SA going from 1 MHz to 2MHz, with a 60 ms sweep. I'm sweeping the SA twice as long over twice the range so I can see where the signal ends in the middle of the screen.
Is the problem that at lower RBW settings, the poor sync between the sweeps is being exposed? I want to look at the response of filters, and don't want a high RBW to smooth things to the point that I don't see what's actually happening.
I know if this were completely doable, tracking gens wouldn't be a thing, so I have low expectations. I just want to see how good I can get my janky setup to work.