Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Neomys Sapiens]

I've always thought, possibly incorrectly, that a maisonette was a two story dwelling somewhere in a skyscraper. So it is more-or-less a "flat" with an internal private staircase, and the "street level" might be a "street in the sky".

That description would fit, I believe - but am more than open to correction, what our North American cousins would call a 'duplex' in a 'condo' - both terms unheard outside the continent of North America.

Maisonette is almost always used (around these parts anyway) to refer to low-rise buildings. Go beyond two dwellings in one (vertical) building and I'd start talking about a 'block of flats' or a 'flatblock' as some would have it. Maisonette might stretch to more dwellings in some of the older London houses that have been retrospectively converted into upper flats that share a street level entrance and a basement flat with it's own entrance. I think the essence of 'maisonette' is that the envelope of the building ought to fit the idea of 'house' in that locale.

I'm not sure where "there" is, but here a definition (other than "small house") is "An apartment occupying two or more floors of a larger building and often having its own entrance from outside."

Example; note the two storey repeat pattern:


Source: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4465564,-2.5909768,3a,75y,292.04h,107.67t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s9tsSLo8OQFjGWJMwVYXp1w!2e0!5s20170401T000000!7i13312!8i6656

That is where you are living? So please, enlighten us regarding the purpose of a 'eel slap center' in your neighborhood!

My guess, given the reviews of the location, is some health care facility of some sort. Of course, if you click on the website icon, you are taken to www.eelslap.com    
Typical Eastender humor; to place a booby-trap like that on Guugle for unsuspecting 'merkins to fall into. 

mnem
*back into sorting-ily hell*

As yuck as I had hoped for!

[mnementh]

I actually left this ↓ scene for my wife to find one morning when we first got together. 

I like how the one on the left seems to be far less concerned than the others, and the one on the right has unibrow.   

He's looking askance at the one screaming hysterically.  Unibrow has progressed past hysteria to clenched paralysis; the one behind him is twitching maniacally. The one behind Hysteria is crying for his two brothers, who were taken LAST breakfast. The one in the middle was already suicidal, so is completely dejected at being passed over yet again, and the others are either howling along with Hysteria or moaning out loud.

See? A little character development helps you feel INVOLVED. 

My guess, given the reviews of the location, is some health care facility of some sort. Of course, if you click on the website icon, you are taken to www.eelslap.com    
Typical Eastender humor; to place a booby-trap like that on Guugle for unsuspecting 'merkins to fall into. 

mnem
*back into sorting-ily hell*

As yuck as I had hoped for!

Damn. I skip being around my computer for nine hours and four pages get added to this thread in my absence. Worse yet, there are approximately four hundred obtuse and impossible to just skim and get on with it posts, which means I will spend two hours just sorting through whatever it is the lot of you has been ranting about, miss having a proper dinner, and not get any studying done for tomorrow's session.

 

The good news is I spent almost the entire day outside working first responder scenarios on a beautiful Portland summer day, demonstrated that I haven't forgotten how to do a proper patient assessment, and remembered enough of my signs/symptoms/diagnosis/treatment decision trees to feel comfortable that I will pass the recert test tomorrow.

Not that any of that has anything to do with TE, TEA, TEAS, and so on but apparently that lack is never much of an issue around here.   

Glad to be of service! 

Ummmm... break a leg...? 

mnem
*dumber than advertised*

[mnementh]

Some people see a dead flashlight... I see a CANDIDATE. 

mnem
 

[bitseeker]

Is it normal for the trace to be so thick (is that what you call it)? I'm an SA noob and this one being a used machine of unknown history doesn't help with knowing what to expect as normal. The cal signal looks reasonable to me.

Next question is how to best test out the bandwidth of the scope probes since I don't have those probe-to-bnc adapters.

Be very careful about the SA input; compared with scopes the input is relatively vulnerable w.r.t. DC and power. With a noise souce, don't forget that the relevant power is integral of all the powers at all the frequencies - so a -30dBm trace isn't as "safe" as you might think.

Thanks, yeah, there's a big red warning about 0 DCV on the input. I guess I should've used a pad on the input for safety's sake until seeing how much signal is there. So, how would I estimate the power of a noise source since its noise is kind of all over the place? Should I add a -10 dB (or more) attenuator when using this source?

You are looking at a noise source, so unsurprisingly the trace looks noisy. Play around and understand the effects of "video bandwidth", "resolution bandwidth" and "trace averaging".

OK, I'll play around more with it to get a feel for what it does. I kind of figured out the markers. The front panel layout is quite different from HP, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Connecting a scope probe. Don't forget the SA has a 50ohm input, so a standard "high" impedance probe can't be connected to the input. OTOH a "low" impedance Z0 resistive divider probe is fine.

If you want to measure the response of a probe, then you should use whatever connection mechanism you will be using in the real circuit, including a 6" ground lead (if you must!). The best results will be obtained with the standard short bent spring wire slipped over the probe's ground, or similar.

Hmm, so that means I can't test the 100 and 200 MHz probes since they're standard ones. I hadn't thought about the scope's input being 1 MΩ. Thanks for the reminder.

[bitseeker]

Is it normal for the trace to be so thick (is that what you call it)? I'm an SA noob and this one being a used machine of unknown history doesn't help with knowing what to expect as normal. The cal signal looks reasonable to me.

Lowering the resolution bandwidth (sweep step size) will make the trace thinner. But at the same time it will increase sweep time (slow down the SA). So normally if you want the same reactivity you need to also reduce the span.

Then if you still have some noise you can lower video bandwidth (this is mostly a averaging at the end of the chain just before displaying the data).

Another way is to enable the averaging trace. On newer SA you overlay averaging trace on top of the signal.

Siglent explain the basic better then I do on their web site: https://www.siglenteu.com/application-note/spectrum-analyzer-basics-bandwidth/

Have fun with your new SA and congrats! 

Thanks for the tips and the link. Time for some homework!

[bitseeker]

Is it normal for the trace to be so thick (is that what you call it)? I'm an SA noob and this one being a used machine of unknown history doesn't help with knowing what to expect as normal. The cal signal looks reasonable to me.

Looking nice! 

As to the trace width, it's normal for wide spans. As you reduce the span, it will get smaller. My 8568B and 8566A behave the same way.

Thanks for the confirmation. Good to know both unknown devices are working properly. No post-purchase repairs required.

[bitseeker]

I actually left this ↓ scene for my wife to find one morning when we first got together. 

That's quite the breakfast scene! Hilarious.

[bd139]

No radio rally for me. Slept through my alarm and don’t fancy a 200 mile round trip now. Will have to lurk on eBay instead

[tggzzz]

Is it normal for the trace to be so thick (is that what you call it)? I'm an SA noob and this one being a used machine of unknown history doesn't help with knowing what to expect as normal. The cal signal looks reasonable to me.

Next question is how to best test out the bandwidth of the scope probes since I don't have those probe-to-bnc adapters.

Be very careful about the SA input; compared with scopes the input is relatively vulnerable w.r.t. DC and power. With a noise souce, don't forget that the relevant power is integral of all the powers at all the frequencies - so a -30dBm trace isn't as "safe" as you might think.

Thanks, yeah, there's a big red warning about 0 DCV on the input. I guess I should've used a pad on the input for safety's sake until seeing how much signal is there. So, how would I estimate the power of a noise source since its noise is kind of all over the place? Should I add a -10 dB (or more) attenuator when using this source?

And a big warning about max power.

An external attenuator will help provide protection, but a DC block is also useful. Minicircuits does inline SMA 18GHz blocks relatively (this is RF) cheaply.

Note that if you power a UUT on/off it could still have transients which could "go through" the DC block.

There are attenuators inside the SA, but they are designed for linearity and frequency response, and won't dissipate much power.

Measure the noise power with a calibrated thermocouple/resistor; power meters are readily available on fleabay/hamfests, but working heads cost much more Alternatively estimate it from the "excess noise" spec and the bandwidth, and then apply an appropriate pessimisation factor.

[tggzzz]

I've always thought, possibly incorrectly, that a maisonette was a two story dwelling somewhere in a skyscraper. So it is more-or-less a "flat" with an internal private staircase, and the "street level" might be a "street in the sky".

That description would fit, I believe - but am more than open to correction, what our North American cousins would call a 'duplex' in a 'condo' - both terms unheard outside the continent of North America.

Maisonette is almost always used (around these parts anyway) to refer to low-rise buildings. Go beyond two dwellings in one (vertical) building and I'd start talking about a 'block of flats' or a 'flatblock' as some would have it. Maisonette might stretch to more dwellings in some of the older London houses that have been retrospectively converted into upper flats that share a street level entrance and a basement flat with it's own entrance. I think the essence of 'maisonette' is that the envelope of the building ought to fit the idea of 'house' in that locale.

I'm not sure where "there" is, but here a definition (other than "small house") is "An apartment occupying two or more floors of a larger building and often having its own entrance from outside."

Example; note the two storey repeat pattern:


Source: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4465564,-2.5909768,3a,75y,292.04h,107.67t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s9tsSLo8OQFjGWJMwVYXp1w!2e0!5s20170401T000000!7i13312!8i6656

That is where you are living? So please, enlighten us regarding the purpose of a 'eel slap center' in your neighborhood!

My guess, given the reviews of the location, is some health care facility of some sort. Of course, if you click on the website icon, you are taken to www.eelslap.com    
Typical Eastender humor; to place a booby-trap like that on Guugle for unsuspecting 'merkins to fall into. 

I have no idea how you come up with those conclusions!

The building is owned by Bristol City Council, and is local authority housing for those that don't earn enough to own their own property (the UK property market is broken and a political hot potato).

There was the general hospital a couple of hundred yards away, but that was sold off for yuppie/investment flats. The political hot potato was that nobody could define who really owned it before it was sold (cf Thatcher's selling the Trustee Savings Bank and pocketing the cash).

And just to complete the mystery, I don't see any pointers leading to eelslap!

[mnementh]

   Did you actually LOOK at the screenshot you quoted? I took it from where the above Google Maps link landed; if you zoom out a little, it's right on Redcliff Hill between Prewett and Colston Parade. If you then click on the Eel Slap Centre pin, you get the view in that screenshot. The review at the bottom could easily have been about staff at some bureaucratic offices, but "pastoral care" sounds more like a medical facility of some sort.

Sure, I'm prone to pulling a leg from time to time... but that was absolutely factual; at least as far as what I saw on the Google Maps.  Whether that has any bearing whatsoever on what's there IRL, I'm sure you can speak to much better than I. But this kind of discrepancy between IRL and what's on Guurgle is hardly news.


[EDIT] If I scroll down on those reviews, I can see that the rest of them refer to it as a prep school; so yup, my misunderstanding. Officially known as Dulverton House, Bristol BS1 6RB, UK

I would then guess that the "Eel Slap Centre" pin is most likely a school kid's prank. [/EDIT]

mnem
*up entirely too late for my own good*

[Ice-Tea]

Soo.. RIFA's. Replace them with new RIFAs? Have they sorted them out? Guaranteed to be OK? If so, what's up with the choice of series resistance they offer? How to choose? Or just use the "generic" blue X2/Y2 caps? But again, what with the series resistance.

[med6753]

No radio rally for me. Slept through my alarm and don’t fancy a 200 mile round trip now. Will have to lurk on eBay instead

Sounds like a plan to me.  I can't get up the ambition to start painting. Didn't happen yesterday. Doubt it will happen today.  It's not that I really dislike painting but it is disruptive and sort of a PITA. But I like the results.

Maybe tomorrow. 

Edit.....the replacement caps for the Heath S-3 will arrive tomorrow so that will be a further distraction.   

[tautech]

Soo.. RIFA's. Replace them with new RIFAs? Have they sorted them out? Guaranteed to be OK? If so, what's up with the choice of series resistance they offer? How to choose? Or just use the "generic" blue X2/Y2 caps? But again, what with the series resistance.

If you can get a good look at them from the sides and there's no crazing I'd leave them be for now.
The translucent amber ones are the most troublesome IME and grey, white, blue or whatever are cased in a different plastic and seem to give zero trouble.

Remember they are just for mains spike filtering so values are non-crucial and you can even leave them out.

Edit
Just measured some 68nF X class jobbies I have here @ 10 KHz = 1.6 ohms.

[BU508A]

You Brits and your unique terms. I had to look up "maisonette". That term is unknown here, or at least I never heard of it. And guess what? I live in one! Holy shit!  The next time someone asks about where I live I'll tell them in a maisonette and watch the puzzled looks. 

@med: I have here a very educational video about different terms in AE and BE:



And, as a bonus (it is also somehow electronics related), one of my favourite sketches
about speech controlled elevators in Scotland:



Have fun, I had a lot. 

[Specmaster]

Damn. I skip being around my computer for nine hours and four pages get added to this thread in my absence. Worse yet, there are approximately four hundred obtuse and impossible to just skim and get on with it posts, which means I will spend two hours just sorting through whatever it is the lot of you has been ranting about, miss having a proper dinner, and not get any studying done for tomorrow's session.

 

The good news is I spent almost the entire day outside working first responder scenarios on a beautiful Portland summer day, demonstrated that I haven't forgotten how to do a proper patient assessment, and remembered enough of my signs/symptoms/diagnosis/treatment decision trees to feel comfortable that I will pass the recert test tomorrow.

Not that any of that has anything to do with TE, TEA, TEAS, and so on but apparently that lack is never much of an issue around here.   

Yeh, good luck in the test although your confidence seems to be brimming over,[emoji849]

Sent from my POT-LX1 using Tapatalk

[med6753]

You Brits and your unique terms. I had to look up "maisonette". That term is unknown here, or at least I never heard of it. And guess what? I live in one! Holy shit!  The next time someone asks about where I live I'll tell them in a maisonette and watch the puzzled looks. 

@med: I have here a very educational video about different terms in AE and BE:



And, as a bonus (it is also somehow electronics related), one of my favourite sketches
about speech controlled elevators in Scotland:



Have fun, I had a lot. 

The first video is unavailable.

[BU508A]

The first video is unavailable.

Oh no!     Try to search for the following things: cookie monster   John Oliver    biscuits

Hopefully you'll get a link which is working.

[bd139]

Well good job I didn’t go to that ham fest as my youngest just kneed herself in the face doing ninja kicks and knocked a tooth out then proceeded to wipe blood over everything and the older two didn’t even notice 

[Specmaster]

There you go, see you just wern't meant to go after all. Is she OK now, tell the other 2 off and  were they doing if they didn't notice, sure she must have screamed or cried

[med6753]

The first video is unavailable.

Oh no!     Try to search for the following things: cookie monster   John Oliver    biscuits

Hopefully you'll get a link which is working.

I come up with several videos of cookie monster and John Oliver but not that one.

[med6753]

Well good job I didn’t go to that ham fest as my youngest just kneed herself in the face doing ninja kicks and knocked a tooth out then proceeded to wipe blood over everything and the older two didn’t even notice 

Oh no! A primary or secondary tooth?

[Specmaster]

Wow what a tracking history these transistors have, all for my Hacker Herald radio I'm restoring back to health again., If only I had as much info on the other almost unobtainable transistors. I have had to source parts from China, Bulgaria and the USA to fix it with, and irony of it all is that is a British designed and build radio 

 Sold by specspecialty ( 6443 )
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(2) 2N406 ( EQUAL NTE102) RCA TRANSISTOR PNP GERMANIUM 32V 1A TO-1 MEDIUM DRIVER
(2) 2N406 ( EQUAL NTE102) RCA TRANSISTOR PNP GERMANIUM 32V 1A TO-1 MEDIUM DRIVER
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[BU508A]

I come up with several videos of cookie monster and John Oliver but not that one.

    How about dailymotion? Sadly, the quality of the video is poor but probably it'll work:

[VK5RC]

The real problem with TEA is fitting the gear into the space available, spent the weekend, rebuilding a taller shelving unit, behind and incorporating the desk- on the north wall. Not finished yet - I want a split shelf - on the right side - so I have to get some nice aluminium angle. I am starting to rearrange the other shelves as well.
A bit of a PITA - but I am not moving country!