Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[vk6zgo]

Wrong, if it hasn't got them fitted then it's fine, exactly the same as early cars never had seat belts and there has been no law passed making them compulsory retro fits either. In fact, many of the earlier cars do not have suitable mounting points anyway.

It's your car, and it's your life, all I'm saying is that to my mind, and I'm sure to many others, if you have them, then why not use them, it has no significant cost impact in doing so.

The chances of a multimeter blowing up in your hand while you're prodding the mains power supply in your home etc is very slim indeed, but would you do so with a cheap Harbour Freight meter or would you use your Fluke 87? 

I don't actually know if you have such a cheap nasty meter, but I'm sure that you catch my drift, I do know you have other lesser meters and I can't imagine that you'd use them in that fashion while you had a far more robust meter at hand?

So lemme get this straight. If a car didn't come with DRL's it's OK. Drive it to your heart's content. But if you car DID come with DRL's and you disable them YOU ARE GOING TO KILL YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE.      

No, I did not say that. It is not a slur on your driving ability at all to use them, have you not seen that there are safety benefits for all concerned in the use of DRL's, ESC's, ABS's and other modern safety devices on vehicles and that you only wear your seat belt because the law insist that you do?

We are concerned for your well-being as well as that of other road users   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp

And you're not reading what I said. I said I have been wearing seat belts ever since I started driving in 1969 many, many years before it was the law.

Can we agree to disagree and end this.....Please. 

I had after market lap/sash belts on my 1963 Holden, & became quite used to them, although that style of belt was not yet mandated.

On one occasion, the Holden was laid up for a few days, so I hired an early model Ford Cortina, which had plain old "lap" belts.
All was good, till i tried getting out of  it, & was momentarily confused with why I couldn't!
The "lap belts" just felt like "no belts at all" after getting used to the other style.

So there you go---I was confused" in my 20s, so it isn't "oldtimer's disease"!

[AVGresponding]

Unfortunately only one channel module installed. Would have been double the payday otherwise.
It's on eBay, outside eBay it's obviously a fair bit cheaper.


*ice-tea out*

Would you take a half eaten Mars bar and a broken XBOX in exchange?

[vk6zgo]

Well, the SG503 that I replaced the front panel on works great, except the 100-250MHz range...
It's range is currently low at 87.2-230MHz...

I've rebuilt the variable cap, replaced all the drifted parts with new, given is a spit shine, etc etc, but there isn't much adjustment for this range to bring it into spec.
One thing I think may be an issue is that I replaced some drifty carbon composite resistors but used metal film, so I'm wondering if they are messing things up with parasitic capacitance/inductance.
(R145, R146, R150 center left of the schematic)

I think I might try replacing them again but use large SMD resistors to get something more non-inductive etc. I'm pretty certain I don't have any 1/8W 51R carbon composite resistors in my stock, and the store in Akihabara with them only sells 1/4W and above from memory.

I also need to go get some realllly thick grease for the reduction gear assembly on the frequency adjustment dial, the thinner standard grease I used makes for a notchy feeling.

I've always been suspicious of film resistors, since the Lecturer at Tech School, using a "Q meter" demonstrated just how inductive carbon film resistors (Gee! I'm old) were compared to the much maligned carbon composite ones.
Some film resistors (thankfully, a vanishing number) use the "El Cheapo" means of adjusting the values & cut a spiral track through the film, yielding metal film resistors which are just as inductive as those old (Philips) carbon film ones.

[vk6zgo]

Unfortunately only one channel module installed. Would have been double the payday otherwise.
It's on eBay, outside eBay it's obviously a fair bit cheaper.


*ice-tea out*

Would you take a half eaten Mars bar and a broken XBOX in exchange?

As long as the XBOX isn't broken because someone very young, instead of eating the Mars bar, rammed half of it into the device.
Many, many, years ago, my son managed to screw up a Commodore 64 keyboard bigtime by smooshing a "Caramello Koala" choccy bar into it!
I bet you didn't know that caramel is corrosive!

[Robert763]

No TEA for me this week. Nearest I got was debating optimum bandwidths and dwell times when using an FFT spectrum analyser to measure emissions from equpment using a reverberation chamber so you get the same results as using a swept analyser in a semi-anechoic chamber.
Did get one test clarified to make sure testers caused fifteen explosions instead of five 
Currently sitting in the lounge at Dulles waiting for the flight home.

[Cubdriver]

LMAO - love it - well played, sir!!

But...



Gilmore.  Humble.  Servant.


-Pat

[mnementh]

I fear our generation will be the last to know of this meme... and The Great Catspiracy it represents. 

oh shit... I think they're onto me...

mnem

[cyclin_al]

The reason for this is because the amber color illuminates objects better when there is visual noise of rain or fog.

No, the theory is that yellow light will undergo less Tyndall scattering so will illuminate the fog less (as opposed to illuminating the scene more), thus adding less noise to the environment (Tyndall scattering is inversely proportional to the 4th power of wavelength, shorter wavelengths scatter more).

I say theory because in practice I haven't found that yellow fog lights are any better than white ones. The difference between yellow at ~580nm and the rest of the spectrum integrated up to blue at ~475nm isn't in fact a lot when you additionally take the black body spectrum of ~2500K incandescent light into account which is already on the downslope as it heads toward blue, doesn't really add up to a perceptually significant difference, especially when recalling that light intensity perception is also logarithmic itself.

That is the best explanation I have seen for it.

Typical fog lights here in the GWN have a wide beam, whereas the auxiliary driving lights have a narrow beam.  There is also the variation called cornering lights also with a narrow beam, where the lamp on the far left of the car is aimed to the right, and vice versa.

There is a minimum height for mounting driving lights that are for legal road use.  Fog lights are mounted as low as possible, or lower than allowed, in an attempt to keep the scattered light from directly reflecting back into the drivers eyes.  White fog lamps are now much more common than yellow.

GWN regulation is antiquated.  Maximum of 160W total and 4 lamps of forward illumination.  With LED lighting, wattage is no longer a practical limitation.  Counting bulbs is near impossible with integrated headlamps.  Some people are now running LED light bars with impunity...  Extra lighting can be installed for off-road use, just not used when on-road (ie. do not get caught).

[cyclin_al]

No such thing as "auxiliary driving lights" for road use. On the front they are headlights or foglights. Less tha 24" above the ground can only be a foglight.
On diconnectting DRLs, if you have an accident involving vibility of your vehicle this might be used against you.

One needs to be careful when making definitive statements like "Less tha (sic) 24" above the ground can only be a foglight". While that might be true under, for example, "The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989", it may not necessarily be true of New York's Vehicle and Traffic laws.

And anyway, if we are talking about "The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989" the relevant figure for the minimum height of headlamps is 500mm.

In addition, "fog lights" tend to have a wide beam while "driving lights" have a narrow beam for distance. These lights fall into the latter category. Regardless of someone's height definitions they really do reach out and provide early warning for the local deer which like to do suicide by car. I also have them biased slightly to the right so as to not blind oncoming drivers  and also the fore mentioned spotting of those 4 legged dumb asses lurking amongst the trees ready to dash out.

Absolutely!

These wretched critters also tend to travel in threes.  Most people seem not to understand.
I often see the first deer from a reasonable distance as it crosses the road.  No problem, since it has crossed?  No way.
That just means it is going to be a close-call for the second deer and a likely crash with the third one.
Many times I have saved myself by stopping and then crawling by the crossing deer path.  Following drivers get all frustrated at losing 0.45 seconds of their life; I am waiting for the one to pass me and hit the deer.  That should more than make up for the 0.45 seconds.

Similar for moose, they travel sometimes in twos.  Moose are not suicidal, but rather homicidal.  Also, their shade of brown must in reality be a magical dark orange that is so dark that it absorbs all light 

[Neomys Sapiens]

These wretched critters also tend to travel in threes.  Most people seem not to understand.

Now you have me convinced that they are artiodactyls of questionable morality!

[Ice-Tea]

I'm out. Way to clunky for just one channel, and many measurements are not possible with just one channel. For a price tag that I won't disclose because most probably you'd never speak to me again afterwards, I'd consider it an interesting teardown and other studies object. It's quite a challenge to verify 1MHz power analyzer measurements, requires thought and time, and at the moment I don't have an appropriate rabbit hole

I wouldn't mind sending it to you for fun and giggles? Just have to be aware it's on eBay and if it sells t you'll have to put it back together again and drop it off at a DPD point. Oh, and don't kill it.

Also: if you're bored I have a DOA 34401A that might be interested in meeting someone with too much time on their hands...

[capt bullshot]

I'm out. Way to clunky for just one channel, and many measurements are not possible with just one channel. For a price tag that I won't disclose because most probably you'd never speak to me again afterwards, I'd consider it an interesting teardown and other studies object. It's quite a challenge to verify 1MHz power analyzer measurements, requires thought and time, and at the moment I don't have an appropriate rabbit hole

I wouldn't mind sending it to you for fun and giggles? Just have to be aware it's on eBay and if it sells t you'll have to put it back together again and drop it off at a DPD point. Oh, and don't kill it.

Also: if you're bored I have a DOA 34401A that might be interested in meeting someone with too much time on their hands...

That's a good idea, so I can count on this thing leaving my lab at some unknown point in the future, freeing up the space again.
Wouldn't mind if there's a borked 34401A in the package, but atm it may take serious time until I start looking at it (suppose you want it back in the same or better state).

[mansaxel]

You might prefer a 6209B, the manual for the A version is unobtainium.

David

I'm not picky, so yes, that might be entirely true.

[mansaxel]

And yet, people have been putting stranded and solid core wires together for over a century using wirenuts.

True mark of the fool, doing the same error over and over again...

I'll admit to not liking to do it, and I'll refuse to do it with fine-stranded wire if I can get away with it. But I do know how to do it with the usual coarse-strand stuff pulled through conduit. 

My personal preference is to use a barrier strip, even if just for a couple conductors. What is your opinion of using one of these with a 4-6 pin radial compression crimper?

If it is a couple, it's OK, but if you get into a menage-a-trois, more advanced stuff is required. I'm not prepared to use the common insulated barrier strip like this



...for more than one conductor per side, yes, I've done and regretted it but with the Wago 221, there is no more an excuse for it. 

And IF I'm using the barrier strip (it often comes preinstalled in lights, if they've not converted to QC terminals of some kind) I insist on ferrules to govern stranded cable. Crush/Cut/Nick problems disappear with ferrules, and escaping strands are no more a hazard.

Wire-nuts are still, and will be, replace-on-sight for me.

[exor]

Some pictures of Thandar TF1100 that has been used only few times during last thirty years. This was bought about 1991 for a company where I used to work until it was shut down couple of years ago.

It has 1GHz prescaler but not the oven timebase that was an option. Lots of MC10.. and 74LS.. IC’s and all in sockets.

I have lost the manual but one can easily handle this without it. It would be nice to have service manual though, TF1000 (100MHz) would do also.

[david77]

And yet, people have been putting stranded and solid core wires together for over a century using wirenuts.

True mark of the fool, doing the same error over and over again...

I'll admit to not liking to do it, and I'll refuse to do it with fine-stranded wire if I can get away with it. But I do know how to do it with the usual coarse-strand stuff pulled through conduit. 

My personal preference is to use a barrier strip, even if just for a couple conductors. What is your opinion of using one of these with a 4-6 pin radial compression crimper?

If it is a couple, it's OK, but if you get into a menage-a-trois, more advanced stuff is required. I'm not prepared to use the common insulated barrier strip like this



...for more than one conductor per side, yes, I've done and regretted it but with the Wago 221, there is no more an excuse for it. 

And IF I'm using the barrier strip (it often comes preinstalled in lights, if they've not converted to QC terminals of some kind) I insist on ferrules to govern stranded cable. Crush/Cut/Nick problems disappear with ferrules, and escaping strands are no more a hazard.

Wire-nuts are still, and will be, replace-on-sight for me.

When I have to get more than one stranded wire into one side of the chockblock I use twin ferrules like these
https://www.reichelt.de/100er-pack-twin-aderendhuelsen-1-5mm--vt-aeht-1-5-100-p231454.html?PROVID=2788&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvebQ-Jun9wIVIYxoCR0g7A0rEAQYAyABEgI6ifD_BwE


But the 221 made all this so much easier  .

[med6753]

Well Pat, it appears you nailed it. I waved that red flag in front of Murphy and he ran with it. Rather than USPS sending the package north towards me from their international center in NYC they sent it west to Phillipsburg, NJ which is on the NJ/PA border. Why? Who the freak knows.  I have a picture of the package and it's properly addressed. I can only hope there is a method to their madness but I wouldn't bet on it. 

[Specmaster]

<snip>
Typical fog lights here in the GWN have a wide beam, whereas the auxiliary driving lights have a narrow beam.  There is also the variation called cornering lights also with a narrow beam, where the lamp on the far left of the car is aimed to the right, and vice versa.
<snip>

Over here it is the lamp on the right that is aimed to the right at something like 45 degrees and vice versa. The same lamp also doubles up as fog lights by having special reflectors and also 2 bulbs.

[BU508A]

Well Pat, it appears you nailed it. I waved that red flag in front of Murphy and he ran with it. Rather than USPS sending the package north towards me from their international center in NYC they sent it west to Phillipsburg, NJ which is on the NJ/PA border. Why? Who the freak knows.  I have a picture of the package and it's properly addressed. I can only hope there is a method to their madness but I wouldn't bet on it. 

And I hoped, that you'll receive it within the next two days or so.   

[med6753]

Wire-nuts are still, and will be, replace-on-sight for me.

I would agree that Wago is a much superior connector and I intend on trying them out the next time I have to do some wiring. However, why disturb a wire nut that has probably been in place for decades and is functioning properly? No need to answer because I already know the answer. You don't trust them and you have the full support and backing of the majority of this group. Fine, I'll go along with that.

Now applying the same principle why do I always get nannies waving their fingers at me when I mention that I will replacing all electrolytic capacitors in a piece of equipment with a proven track record of failure? After all, they have been in place for decades and functioning properly...right? Well, not quite. But I always get a Mary Poppins or two think I'm being wasteful. No, smart. Perhaps they should open their umbrellas and fly away.     

[Cerebus]

GWN regulation is antiquated.  Maximum of 160W total and 4 lamps of forward illumination.  With LED lighting, wattage is no longer a practical limitation.  Counting bulbs is near impossible with integrated headlamps.  Some people are now running LED light bars with impunity...  Extra lighting can be installed for off-road use, just not used when on-road (ie. do not get caught).

If you look in most countries' small print amending regulations for vehicle construction you'll most likely find some sort of all-encompassing regulation that says something to the effect that "A vehicle constructed to UNECE WP.29 regulations shall satisfy all national regulations". The UNECE Vehicle Regulations are an attempt to unify vehicle construction regulations worldwide, which makes sense because each country legislating for the same technical parameters (e.g. minimum headlamp height) but varying subtlely nation by nation is a dumb idea and a true headache for motor manufacturers around the world.

So even if your local regulations are antiquated you'll probably find that they can be trumped by the UNECE regulations which are an evolving set of requirements and are at least considered for updating twice yearly. Canada is a 'contracting party' to the UNECE.

The whole UNECE thing is one of those oddities where the body has gone on to outlive its original purpose (an international treaty organization managing the economic reconstruction of Europe after the 2nd world war) to become something completely different while retaining the same name. The "World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations" (WP.29) which is part of UNECE has been around since 1958.

[med6753]

GWN regulation is antiquated.  Maximum of 160W total and 4 lamps of forward illumination.  With LED lighting, wattage is no longer a practical limitation.  Counting bulbs is near impossible with integrated headlamps.  Some people are now running LED light bars with impunity...  Extra lighting can be installed for off-road use, just not used when on-road (ie. do not get caught).

If you look in most countries' small print amending regulations for vehicle construction you'll most likely find some sort of all-encompassing regulation that says something to the effect that "A vehicle constructed to UNECE WP.29 regulations shall satisfy all national regulations". The UNECE Vehicle Regulations are an attempt to unify vehicle construction regulations worldwide, which makes sense because each country legislating for the same technical parameters (e.g. minimum headlamp height) but varying subtlely nation by nation is a dumb idea and a true headache for motor manufacturers around the world.

So even if your local regulations are antiquated you'll probably find that they can be trumped by the UNECE regulations which are an evolving set of requirements and are at least considered for updating twice yearly. Canada is a 'contracting party' to the UNECE.

The whole UNECE thing is one of those oddities where the body has gone on to outlive its original purpose (an international treaty organization managing the economic reconstruction of Europe after the 2nd world war) to become something completely different while retaining the same name. The "World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations" (WP.29) which is part of UNECE has been around since 1958.

Over here most major items are covered by Federal standards. But not all of them. For example. In NYS if I have to replace the cat convertor it must be one that is CARB (California Air Resources Board) certified. It cannot be a generic replacement like most other states. And those CARB certified convertors naturally are much more expensive. Now does NYS do tailpipe tests like California? Nope. But if you install a generic non-certified convertor it won't pass NYS annual inspection.

[Cubdriver]

Well Pat, it appears you nailed it. I waved that red flag in front of Murphy and he ran with it. Rather than USPS sending the package north towards me from their international center in NYC they sent it west to Phillipsburg, NJ which is on the NJ/PA border. Why? Who the freak knows.  I have a picture of the package and it's properly addressed. I can only hope there is a method to their madness but I wouldn't bet on it. 

Ah crap!     Fingers crossed that they get it to you soon.  I've learned not to comment on anything here until I have it in my hands - jinxed myself too many times.

-Pat

[Cerebus]

These wretched critters also tend to travel in threes.  Most people seem not to understand.
I often see the first deer from a reasonable distance as it crosses the road.  No problem, since it has crossed?  No way.
That just means it is going to be a close-call for the second deer and a likely crash with the third one.
Many times I have saved myself by stopping and then crawling by the crossing deer path.  Following drivers get all frustrated at losing 0.45 seconds of their life; I am waiting for the one to pass me and hit the deer.  That should more than make up for the 0.45 seconds.

It never ceases to amaze me how many drivers don't think "Why has that guy in front of me stopped?" before impatiently barrelling past and getting themselves into trouble. It seems that there is a whole class of drivers whose impatience overrides the common sense idea that perhaps the guy at the front of the queue can see more than the impatient guy in the middle of the queue.

This happens to me every other week when I get to the following bit of road in my journey back from the supermarket. I will be driving North here:



I will get to the point just at the bottom of the photo. There will be a bus at the bus stop and traffic queuing to turn at the end of the road, so I will stop at the very bottom of the picture and wait (on the left remember). There's no room for two cars and a bus abreast so it's sensible to wait there until the bus moves or the traffic clears, yielding to anyone who wants to pass the bus. I can see the junction to the right, the traffic trying to pass the bus and the queue to turn at the end of the road; people behind me can't, but ought to be able to figure out that I can and that I am reacting to what I can see.

Every other time I do this some impatient unthinking muppet will pull out of the queue behind me and go past on the wrong side of the road, where they can't see the oncoming traffic (there's a bloody great London bus in the way!), they can't see vehicles in the side road to the right, in fact they can't see anything except the vehicles that they are passing and perhaps the additional hazard of vehicles parked on the right. There then ensues a blaring of horns and slamming on of brakes when someone coming from behind the bus (quite correctly because they can see me yield to them) meets the idiot who has just passed me on the wrong side of the road with no forward visibility and who has actively hidden themselves from anybody coming from the other direction.

This wouldn't happen if they could remember, or even might have heard the Golden Rule: "Drive at such a speed that you can stop, on your own side of the road, within the distance you can see is clear.". It's not complicated, it's easy to understand, it's not difficult to do, but it seems beyond the ken of every other driver I meet.  It's the daily encountering of this kind of idiocy that has taken all the pleasure out of daily driving for me over the past few years.

[med6753]

Common sense is a rare commodity anymore. All one has to do is think back to toilet paper. 

Probably the same assholes who disabled their DRL's.