No, don't go grabbing your reading glasses, you are not seeing double here... there ARE two of them !
Can't believe it... just 2 weeks after finding that exotic and rare Ferisol HA300B Nixie counter.... I find another one, exactly the same model !
Murphy at its best. Happens often with some other TE I got... like my glowing Tek type 502A. Bought my first one 4 years ago, then within 6 months I saw half a dozen of them for sale (of course too far to go pick them up), and then for 4 years, zero for sale, until I found my second one a couple months ago as you saw.
So... I knew that seeing this second counter was hardly indicative that they were common as mud, no. All it meant is that I better try and get it or else I would regret it !
Because I am lucky one time in a million... this one was actually close to me ! Like in : only 75kms / an hour drive away !
So I just went to pick it up this afternoon.
This one was sold "For parts", for 80 Euros. Same price I got the other one for, but I don't have to add 25 Euros shipping on this one, so it's still quite OK value for money-wise.
Guy selling it has a lab like I will never have. A HAM guy (yes apparently they still exist here). He split his lab in two : one side for the HAM "operations", the other side for the electronics lab.
HAM bench has 3 LCD screens, half a dozen radios all powered up and buzzing.. he actually USES his gear, I was stunned, it's not for show...
Has lots of cool WWII radio gear, including a 60kg art piece in like new condition, an American Collin "ART 13", that they shoved into bombers.... and lot of cool stuff.
In his garden... I couldn't believe my eyes, a 11 meters high pole with half a dozen antennas mounted on top
3m
3 of concrete at the base to keep it in place, and 0.5m3 of concrete for each of the anchor points for the cables that help keep the mast in place when it's windy..
2 full height / 2meters high 19" racks 100% populated with fancy gear most people here would kill to have. R&S RF synth, HP Network analyzer, Anritsu spectrum analyser, to name a few.
Says every year he takes his camping van and spends a week in Germany in Friedrichshafen, says there is a huge international HAM fest there, a huge venue where they provide space for your camping van, showers, restaurant, electricity for your gear... all for only 50 Euros. The Germans mean business apparently !!!
Anyway, counter is for parts so it's in a very rough shape, though complete and mostly working.
My first counter has now a donor... all I need most likely are a few Thyratron and/or Germanium trannies, of which the donor counter is full. So I am covered....
Might still want to try and get the donor running though, so I can use it as a test bed to assess the health of its Nixie boards.
I cannot test it for now because of its issues. Guy managed to make it count a 45MHz signal, but back home... can't get it to count anything
Guy did say that he accidentally overloaded/blew the front end of the 520MHz Frequency converter plugin (the only plug-in the counter comes with).
so maybe it's a bit hard hearing and I need to crank up the amplitude of the input signal, I don't know... I tried with the old HP 3200B VHF oscillator, no luck. From memory the HP was outputting like 300mVpp.
Will try again with my old sig gen, limited to 1MHz but it can of course deliver much higher amplitudes, so might get me somewhere.
There is at least one Nixie board that's kaput, as you can see : left most digit instead of displaying '0', displays.... uh what the hell is it displaying ?!
Lemme have a closer look... what is this mess of a display... OH..... looks like it's turning on the '4' and '8' digits at the SAME time !
I think guy said another board misbehaves, sometimes turns off, but the problem did not show up when we tested it on his bench. However he said it was one of the low frequency boards (300kHz), (digits #4 to #8 ), so no big deal. The 3 high-frequency ones (50MHz, 10MHz and 2MHz) are fine then... two of the 3 faulty boards on mine, are the 50 and 10MHz ones, so it's cool if they work on the donor counter !
So although I have no intention to restore this one, I still would want to spent a little bit of time to get it going again so I can test its boards without messing with my other counter.
So for that I need to pull the dodgy Frequency converter plugin and swap it for the "normal"/basic plugin from my other counter. BUT.... I can NOT remove the plugin on the donor counter because the mechanism is jammed somehow !!!
You can unlock it and pull the plugin PARTIALLY out, an inch or so, say, not more, at which point it must be catching something somewhere and it won't go out !
So first thing to do is take the counter apart, hoping there is a way to get to the inside of the plugin area without having to resort to destructive methods
Other than that, mains power 'FRB' socket at the back, is half destroyed, would need a replacement in case of a restoration.
Top and bottom cover... 100% of the crews are missing. Needs a paint job all over as well.
Needs some metal work too : big dent on the top cover, front edge, to the right.. also impacted the chromed bezel sadly
But inside it's like the other counter : 100% like new. Not a spec of dust (probably because there is no fan in these things). All boards are conformal coated, and wafer switches gold plated. So... it's new.
It's just the exterior that needs a bit of work.
The colour filter for the display is red versus orange for the other counter... so I have choice now !
Actually I like both... I can't make up my mind...
Ideally.... ideally.... my (first) counter, that I am restoring, most likely only needs a few Germanium trannies and Thyratron, so no big deal.
Hell maybe I can just swap boards with the donor and call it a day, job done.
Then I would not need a donor anymore... and I could, eeeeventually... get carried away and contemplate restoring the donor as well ?!
Yeah.... fixing the first counter just by swapping boards is not fun... I want to design and make my own extender cards so I can work on the Nixie boards and troubleshoot them
Restoring the donor would also be more satisfying as there is more work to do on it, so more satisfaction once it's all fixed up, a greater feeling of achievement eh ?
That's it for tonight, you can now resume your normal activities.