Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

I notice Amazon Logistics have to take a photo of the actual door of the property when they drop stuff off now. They are probably victims of this scam as well.

[Specmaster]

Have you ever waited in waiting for a parcel to be delivered and it doesn't arrive, instead you find a card or a email /SMS message claiming that they attempted delivery but found nobody in and that you can collect it their dept? Well wonder no more this is apparently a scam and this video explains it all and how this person overcomes that problem.

What's the TL;DW? I'm not going to spend 25 minutes watching that lot.

Don't have to, you skip through like I did and just watch the bits of interest 

[Mr. Scram]

I didn't watch it all - but enough to get the basics.

He had a UPS driver pull up near his home, wait a few seconds (enough to get GPS tagging data) and then drive off.  Very shortly after he gets a notification of "attempted delivery".  He was home, has one of those doorbells that rings several annunciators around his house (as well as his phone and watch) plus security cameras (which captured proof).

He calls it a scam because he paid for a service he did not receive and someone else (the lazy driver) benefitted.

That's a broad interpretation of the word scam, which lines up with him being in it for the views. Shitty service it is.

[Ero-Shan]

Not for the faint of heart:

There's a Tektronix 556 complete with cart and 3 extra plug-ins on German eBay: https://www.ebay.de/itm/Tektronix-556-Dual-Beam-Oscilloscope-3-Einschube-Scope-Mobile-205-2/283537534780?hash=item4204276f3c:g:dEMAAOSw-DJdHjXW

Half an hour before auction's end its still at only 62 €. And I might even be able to ask a friend to drive to Güglingen, as it lies only about 60 km from here. I'm extremely tempted! But I don't know where to put it.

I know I will rgeret it, whatever I do - pass it up or bid (and possibly win). Damn. Damn!

[PA0PBZ]

Half an hour before auction's end its still at only 62 €.

Well, that got expensive real fast, was it you? 

[Specmaster]

You're not kidding either, did you get it Ero-Shan?

[mnementh]

I didn't watch it all - but enough to get the basics.

He had a UPS driver pull up near his home, wait a few seconds (enough to get GPS tagging data) and then drive off.  Very shortly after he gets a notification of "attempted delivery".  He was home, has one of those doorbells that rings several annunciators around his house (as well as his phone and watch) plus security cameras (which captured proof).

He calls it a scam because he paid for a service he did not receive and someone else (the lazy driver) benefitted.

Same exact thing happened last time my dad visited, and I tried to buy an "assisted-lift" easy chair for him. Paid for expedited by 6:00PM; item showed "Out for Delivery" until 6:30 when I called to ask WTF as I had waited all day 10 feet from the door for them. Then while I was on the line with them it somehow MAGICALLY got re-classed to "Delivery Refused" at 9:00 AM. I quickly reviewed my front doorcam security footage while on the line with them; UPS NEVER EVER came down my street.

Eventually shit rolled downhill til they got some poor bastard UPS liason to apologize for the "mixup"; I explained that this was not just a mixup, it was outright fraud. I'd paid for express delivery, I didn't get it and SOMEBODY lied about it to make it look okay. The delivery was MEDICALLY REQUIRED, so not something you can just set aside as unimportant. Because it was on Friday, the soonest they could reorder and get it to me would have been Tuesday, and my dad was going back Thursday. 

Eventually after I raised holy hell with Amazon I got a $200 credit which I used later to buy a nice mattress for my daughter; but that still didn't get my dad the lift-chair he needed on time. We shopped them locally but the cost was so ridiculous we just gave up. 



Fuck UPS. With a shovel. Sideways. Attached to 220VAC. And Unicorn farts just because. 

mnem

[mnementh]

Well, HELL!

Come home from dinner out, there's a huge box on the doorstep. Delivered by UPS. 

Oh double hell... it's heavy as two dead polacks... or more likely, two Lambda 200W linear PSUs, and a day early at that. SQUEEEEE!!!

More once I get the box jacked up onto my bench.  

mnem
Okay... okay. UN-FUCK UPS... just this once.

[worsthorse]

Not been a TEA kind of week. Family. House maintenance. Tax audit. And the four free hours I had today I used to deal with my HF antenna, which has been on the list to update for about eight months. I only note it here because it was one of those, "I need three people to do this but there's only me and I can't climb the trees, so what next?"" kind of problems, which folks here generally find interesting.

My HF antenna was shaped like an upside U with 30' legs and a 70' top.  It worked but the vertical legs were worthless during transmit (they ran along tree trunks, etc) and primarily noise antennas on receive. I lived with it for a couple of years. Six months ago I started noodling on the problem and running  EZNEC models. I wanted to find a configuration that (a) met me space constraints and (b) wasn't going to be worse than what Inwas already doing. The answer turned out to be a Z shape. I spent months trying to figure out a way to pull each existing vertical leg up to horizontal, without hiring someone to climb for me.  The result is still not terrific on 80 and 40 meters but nothing will be given the size of the lot. 20 meters will likely be better.  And if I am right and the antenna is less sensitive to noise, that's a win.

Of course the answer involved rope. A lot of rope. And a weight on a string. And a fair amount of muttering. Oh, and a couple of broken tree limbs. Without TL;DR details, the process involved maneuvering existing wire  30 feet up through trees at three different spots simultaneously from one spot on the ground. Closest analogy for the solution space is probably solo piloting a medium to large sailboat.

[Ero-Shan]

You're not kidding either, did you get it Ero-Shan?

I had quite a fight with myself but decided to not have a go at it. Not this time, anyway. It was a great relief when I saw the price soaring to 311 €. At least it wasn't a steal!

Not that I think it was too much. The scope (and the cart) looked like it was in a very good condition.

[tggzzz]

Have you ever waited in waiting for a parcel to be delivered and it doesn't arrive, instead you find a card or a email /SMS message claiming that they attempted delivery but found nobody in and that you can collect it their dept? Well wonder no more this is apparently a scam and this video explains it all and how this person overcomes that problem.

What's the TL;DW? I'm not going to spend 25 minutes watching that lot.

Don't have to, you skip through like I did and just watch the bits of interest 

I tried that and all I saw was a talking head. Useless. Better if his words were written down so I could speedread them.

[BU508A]

And the four free hours I had today I used to deal with my HF antenna, which has been on the list to update for about eight months. I only note it here because it was one of those, "I need three people to do this but there's only me and I can't climb the trees, so what next?"" kind of problems, which folks here generally find interesting.

Sounds familiar to me. I had to deal this week with the satellite dish of a friend of mine. After a thunderstorm he did not receive a signal anymore.
Checking the entire installation and found a broken LNB (which I could fix, because I have always one with me) and
a broken multiswitch (which I had to order, arrived yesterday). Today I will replace the broken multiswitch and hopefully no other
surprises will arise.

And, to be a bit on-topic, this is my instrument I am using: a Kathrein MSK 125, serial number 47 

Edit: the one shown below is not mine, since I am lazy I just googled for a nice picture. 

[mnementh]

That looks to be a bit broader-featured than your typical $100 DVB-S/S2 brick from AliEx. What else does it do?

mnem

[BU508A]

That looks to be a bit broader-featured than your typical $100 DVB-S/S2 brick from AliEx. What else does it do?

mnem

I have one of those Satlink WS-6933

https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-satlink-ws-6933.html



Compared to them, my MSK 125:

- is more accurate
- can do a spectrum analysis (whole band or narrow)
- can show you the current TV-Program
- has an HDMI output (SCART output as well, but SCART is crap)
- bigger and better display
- Datalogging
- can do terrestrial and cable broadcasting analysis
- can do the analog measurements for Sat, terrestrial and cable (not very common anymore in these days)
- very sturdy (Aluminium case)
- comes with a nice and sturdy case (good to impress customers  )

Edit:
- forget to mention this: the MSK 125 has a PCMCIA slot, so one can add a crypto module
  to decrypt encrypted TV programs and therefore doing a proper analysis of encrypted programs

The WS-6933 on the other hand has this advantages:
- very light (a few hundred grams, the MSK 125 is much heavier)
- easy to use
- has a torch
- very nice for finding a satellite when you are going to orient the dish. With the MSK 125 this is more  painful because of its weight and its not so nice user interface.
- has a torch integrated
- comes with a compass which is useful in some cases to determine, where south is

Edit: Link fixed

[mnementh]

LOL... when I did that schizz for a living all we had was the little Birdog meter or the big lunchbox thing about the size of a Igloo with a shoulder strap. You couldn't set the damn thing where you could see it and work, and the 3.5" screen was worthless in daylight anyways, so we just turned the speaker up and moved the bracket until we heard the analog chirpies in the static and then silence. Getting Az-El right for the entire transit on C-Band was quite the chore... We'd set up the actuator close before we built the big dish you could JUST hit Galaxy5 on the horizon IF you didn't have any trees in the way. 

For a while, before DSS, I used an old Hughes 4-Ft dish I'd decommissioned off a bank with a Chapparal 20° LNB for pre-tuning to get the arc just right; it had just enough gain on C-band to get a bird located close to the top & bottom of the swing. If I could get usable signal with that, I knew that once I assembled the 10' dish it would be dead-nuts no matter what cheap-ass LNA/LNB-polarotor the customer bought. Fucking Uniden.  I used to be able to recite the entirety of the visible Clarke belt by heart; now all I can remember now is G5 because it was "The Bitch" due to being just above the horizon up there.

I got out just as DSS was taking over; during my tech school years and later I dabbled in DirecTV installs long enough to build my own system of used parts which I used for many years with looped cards (guess where MY H-Card came from ) until the Black Sunday meltdown. I was already annoyed with DSS myself; I was spending entirely too much unpaid followup time troubleshooting LEGIT systems they'd blown up while setting the "Game Over" code in motion. I sold all my gear to a coworker for $150 and took the money to the local sports bar on Superbowl Sunday.

I've NEVER regretted that decision.

*mnem-ories*

[bitseeker]

The mnem-ories complete the pub-like atmosphere in the TEA house.

[bd139]

Indeed they do.

Was anyone into sat hacking? I must have spent several times a Sky subscription in hardware and time in hacking my sky box smart cards to get MTV unscrambled again. I won in the end 



Also learned PIC16 assembly! Not because I wrote the code but trying to get stuff off hooky usenet groups to assemble 

[kj7e]

Fluke 1953a cleaned up nicely.  The TCXO seems remarkably stable (for a TCXO).

[bd139]

That looks rather good that. Nice job 

[mnementh]

That looks to be a bit broader-featured than your typical $100 DVB-S/S2 brick from AliEx. What else does it do?

mnem

I have one of those Satlink WS-6933   https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-satlink-ws-6933.html

   Compared to them, my MSK 125:

- is more accurate
- can do a spectrum analysis (whole band or narrow)
- can show you the current TV-Program
- has an HDMI output (SCART output as well, but SCART is crap)
- bigger and better display
- Datalogging
- can do terrestrial and cable broadcasting analysis
- can do the analog measurements for Sat, terrestrial and cable (not very common anymore in these days)
- very sturdy (Aluminium case)
- comes with a nice and sturdy case (good to impress customers  )

Edit:
- forget to mention this: the MSK 125 has a PCMCIA slot, so one can add a crypto module
  to decrypt encrypted TV programs and therefore doing a proper analysis of encrypted programs

The WS-6933 on the other hand has this advantages:
- very light (a few hundred grams, the MSK 125 is much heavier)
- easy to use
- has a torch
- very nice for finding a satellite when you are going to orient the dish. With the MSK 125 this is more  painful because of its weight and its not so nice user interface.
- has a torch integrated
- comes with a compass which is useful in some cases to determine, where south is

Edit: Link fixed

      

Yeah, I found myself looking at the Edision Multi-Finder a year or so ago because I'd read it could be flashed to scan everything from 1-12GHz, but never could find a stateside vendor or actual confirmation of that functionality. I was interested in the SA functions for my RC FPV hobbitry.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/EDISION-MULTI-FINDER-Satellite-Terrestrial-Signals/dp/B079P439B8?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_3818062031

Indeed they do.

Was anyone into sat hacking? I must have spent several times a Sky subscription in hardware and time in hacking my sky box smart cards to get MTV unscrambled again. I won in the end 

   Also learned PIC16 assembly! Not because I wrote the code but trying to get stuff off hooky usenet groups to assemble 

WAS.  Not for a really long time, mostly for the same reasons you list above. 

mnem
Not on your nelly!

[tautech]

Was anyone into sat hacking?

Not sat but we did have Sky terrestrial in NZ for some years and all you needed was a PC TV card and a particular decoding program. 
At the time you needed a reasonably modern PC to do all the crunching to get a reasonable picture.

[Mr. Scram]

The mnem-ories complete the pub-like atmosphere in the TEA house.

There's a joke about the noise floor in there.

[ArthurDent]

Like kj7e I also have a Fluke 1953A. Mine doesn't have the C channel option but instead has the output option boards that only eat up power because I never used that option. I always liked the simplicity and logic of the front panel layout but as I got better and newer counters this one got left on the shelf. I couldn't bear to part with it and when I saw a post by kj7e with a photo of his, I dusted mine off and powered it up to take a photo. When I powered it up and checked it against my standard, it read 10.0000039Mhz which isn't too bad for being in an unheated building for several years. I let it warm up for a while and adjusted the time base and it looks pretty good.

[Cubdriver]

An HP 5245M counter (the 5245L's 'smarter' brother, with a high stability (for the 1960s) ovenized oscillator) incremented my counter count by one today.  Found it relatively locally on everyone's favorite wallet vacuum, and was able arrange to meet the seller for pickup, thus saving shipping the cost normally associated with the acquisition of such weighty things.  I haven't gotten to fire it up yet, but it was shown lit up in the listing, so it's at least partially operational.

-Pat

[bitseeker]

The mnem-ories complete the pub-like atmosphere in the TEA house.

There's a joke about the noise floor in there.

Just cover it with saw dust.