Ah, a decent ad just popped up here, when I search for "frequency meters ", albeit in French.
At those prices, buy now, ask questions later. Seriously. You will regret not doing so for years and years, just like I regret letting that $200 Lilliput scope from Arrow slip by. (Old war story )
Nah... been thinking about it overnight... and looked at the service manual.
I think I have managed to come to my senses, for a change.
This counter is expensive for what it offers : a bulky, heavy, low spec low feature a DEFECTIVE counter... for 75 EUros + 7 for shipping and fees, so about 100 bucks.
My current daily driver, good old NIxie counter is better in every way and is already paid for.
- Faster : 160MHz vs 100MHz (RACAL has no RF inpuit, not populated).
- Data output (printer/recorder connector), RACAL does not, GPIB is not installed.
- It works, RACAL is clearly defective, a seller is covering his ass.
RACAL is STILL not sold, which means by now, that nobody wnats it, so even if I managed to fix it, for free, I still could not sell it, never mind make any decent profit on it.
So that means I would have to buy it out of sheer love for its industrial design, only, and nothing else... and I just don't like it that much, especially not when I my wallet is running drier and drier every months, it's pure folly.
I would have bought 4 years ago, when I was initially searching for decent broken pieces of TE under 100 Euros to equip my lab.
4 years later I am past this stage. Now if I buy old stuff it's purely for sex appeal, like my old Nixie TE typically, or the glowing Tek scopes... and even then, the lack of funds and storage space make me more and more critical of what I bug and at what price. It's not open bar anymore so to speak. I have become choosy.
I am trying to become rational. I can't justify buying XXX old defective low/average spec counter, for 75/100 Euros, and then at the same time say I don't have 400/500 to spend on what I really want, a more modern VFD HP compact counter, whatever the model number I can never remember it. Don't have 500 for it ? Yeah but then why did you spend 750 on half a dozen old lesser counters that you don't even use ? See ? At some point I have to act rationally or I will forever stack up old stuff and never have the more modern gear I aspire too.
I now think twice before buying, weigh the pros and cons...
This particular counter doesn't fit anywhere in my plan. Not old enough to be bought on industrial design alone, yet not modern enough to offer a compelling performance or feature improvement over my current gear. It's "in between". It's not cheap enough either to be bought in the " at that price what the hell " category either. 100 bucks might be cheap for a dragon in the USA, it's not here. It's quite a bit of money here for the average joe like me.. especially when jobless and almost broke with only 600 Euros left in the bank as of this morning.
Nah. The Tek 575 tube curve tracer yes, it was worth the financial effort and long drive. But not this counter.
Sue me.
Of course if someone wants it I can help...
As for your component storage via little envelopes... Before I started using plastic shoe boxes as they are more stackable, I used trading card boxes and dividers between crack baggies the same way as you're using your little box. The insides of the box are usually approx 65-70mm by 100-110mm amd they're cheap, like $3-5 each at the local card shop. You'll probably want the ones where the orientation is vertical; for some reason those aren't as common now as they used to be and you have to get two-row boxes to get that:
mnem
*sort-ily*
Hmmm yes, a dedicated box would be cool for sure ! Too old in this day and age to be available off the shelves in physical store I would imagine, but maybe there is a seller somewhere on EBay or amazon who still sells these things...