Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Neomys Sapiens]

On the occasion of 1554 thanked posts:      Who gets the connection?

https://www.mouser.com/c/connectors/circular-connectors/circular-mil-spec-connectors/?q=1554

mnem
I think this connection might be more fun:   

https://www.pnj.com/story/entertainment/events/gopensacola/eats/2014/08/19/beer-garden-black-lager/14296115/

Not that easy, dear MNEM! 

[25 CPS]

The "audio chain" in many ham radio transceivers is probably a couple of transistors,either discrete, or part of an IC, so it would all come back to maybe a faulty, or incorrect mic, or maybe a coupling capacitor.

Again, if you were hearing him on a scanner, he was quite likely to be on 2m FM, so it would be deviation you would be looking at.

Some people can get a pretty good idea of deviation of a speech modulated signal from looking at a spectrum analyser  but the usual method is replace the mic with an audio generator, either for a better estimate, or to look for Bessel "zeros".
A deviation meter is normally used for simple FM signals in industry.

Hams may well not have the equipment to measure deviation, & perforce, must take the manufacturer's settings as being correct, & assume any drop in deviation to be due to an audio fault.

Another possibility is that his radio is set to a lower deviation standard than the others in the group.
There are several of these, & equipment still in commercial service or recently repurposed is usually set to the lower deviations.

I'm not sure what modulation scheme was being used.  If it was FM though, I think you're on to something with the theory of a lower deviation standard being selected.  That would explain low demodulated audio volume for everyone listening even if his transmitter was being driven to what it has been set to for full modulation.

I guess what I was hoping to hear was an offer of "bring your transciever to the next club meet and we'll check it over and see what's going on" or something like that, basically the equivalent of "bring x by and well check it out on the bench and put some food on the barbecue" at my place or bring my portable toolkit in the truck over.

Funny,---- the hamfests here in Perth often have good test equipment, & real "junk" is relatively rare.
Hams here, almost universally have a shower & "spruce themselves up", prior to attending.
I've given up looking for anything ham or TE  oriented  on "Gumnut", & I shy away from eBay, so that leaves hamfests, "carboot" sales, & "shack clearances" by individual hams.
Facebook?---Nah!

Reasonably priced Agilent equipment.  Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it was only listed on Facebook Marketplace so I had to make contact there.  If it had been crossposted on Kijiji or elsewhere that I could find, I would've messaged the seller elsewhere.  My messages still haven't been read so I'm going to give it until the end of the weekend and then scrap the idea of this purchase if I don't hear anything by Monday morning.

[Neomys Sapiens]

On the occasion of 1554 thanked posts: (see image)

Who gets the connection?

1554 thanked posts is the connection of 24/7?

Also nope.

[mnementh]

How did we ever get on the subject of decomposition of human tissue?  I think we missed some subjects in getting here. 

What's next? Mortician training? 

And people on this thread criticize hams for talking about weird stuff!

We don't mind weird; in fact many of us come in here looking for a little weird to brighten our days. 

It's the recursive noise and acrimony we can do without; and it does seem there's an overwhelming preponderance of just this kind of poor SNR in the modern HAM community.

mnem
Cap'n Mal: "You ever see cattle stampede when they got no place to run? It’s kinda like a meat grinder."
River Tam: "The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems..."
Cap'n Mal: "See, morbid and creepifying, I got no problem with, long as she does it quiet-like."

[Robert763]

The "audio chain" in many ham radio transceivers is probably a couple of transistors,either discrete, or part of an IC, so it would all come back to maybe a faulty, or incorrect mic, or maybe a coupling capacitor.

Again, if you were hearing him on a scanner, he was quite likely to be on 2m FM, so it would be deviation you would be looking at.

Some people can get a pretty good idea of deviation of a speech modulated signal from looking at a spectrum analyser  but the usual method is replace the mic with an audio generator, either for a better estimate, or to look for Bessel "zeros".
A deviation meter is normally used for simple FM signals in industry.

Hams may well not have the equipment to measure deviation, & perforce, must take the manufacturer's settings as being correct, & assume any drop in deviation to be due to an audio fault.

Another possibility is that his radio is set to a lower deviation standard than the others in the group.
There are several of these, & equipment still in commercial service or recently repurposed is usually set to the lower deviations.

I'm not sure what modulation scheme was being used.  If it was FM though, I think you're on to something with the theory of a lower deviation standard being selected.  That would explain low demodulated audio volume for everyone listening even if his transmitter was being driven to what it has been set to for full modulation.

I guess what I was hoping to hear was an offer of "bring your transciever to the next club meet and we'll check it over and see what's going on" or something like that, basically the equivalent of "bring x by and well check it out on the bench and put some food on the barbecue" at my place or bring my portable toolkit in the truck over.

Funny,---- the hamfests here in Perth often have good test equipment, & real "junk" is relatively rare.
Hams here, almost universally have a shower & "spruce themselves up", prior to attending.
I've given up looking for anything ham or TE  oriented  on "Gumnut", & I shy away from eBay, so that leaves hamfests, "carboot" sales, & "shack clearances" by individual hams.
Facebook?---Nah!

Reasonably priced Agilent equipment.  Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it was only listed on Facebook Marketplace so I had to make contact there.  If it had been crossposted on Kijiji or elsewhere that I could find, I would've messaged the seller elsewhere.  My messages still haven't been read so I'm going to give it until the end of the weekend and then scrap the idea of this purchase if I don't hear anything by Monday morning.

One explanation is that he was using a modern (or ex PMR) transmitter properly set up for modern narrow channel spacing (10/12.5kHz or less) and the rest were using older 20/25kHz units or poorly made units. A lot of cheap transmitters have narrow channel selection but keep the old filters and deviation.

[Neper]

He's mad.

Not at all.

If anything, I wouldn't have expected the kind of stereotyping and bashing I've seen here over the last day or two. That said, I have a real life and better use for my time and energy.

[mnementh]

Today’s WTF courtesy of instagram:   

So what... the fact of a Nano embedded in a hobbyist-level project?

Or the fact of using Turps instead of IPA (mild cringe)?

Or the fact of getting that filter module wet (I dunno if it's hermetically sealed or not)?

Guy's a professor teaching fundamentals of electronics in Brazil:

https://linktr.ee/allelectronics

https://cursoseletronica.com.br/

https://www.youtube.com/allelectronicschannel

mnem
 

The module is not a filter, it's a 12V in 9V out isolated DC-DC converter. Almost certainly fully encapsulated. They are inteded for (maybe removed from) Thin Ethernet cards and have at least 1kV isolation. A bit of a sleeper on the parts market, they come in 5V and 12V input versions. Handy for isolated supplies or boosting 12V up (output in series with input) to trickle charge batteries.

You caught me being lazy. I saw the name Fil-Mag and made a assumption based on a quick glance.

mnem
 

[McBryce]

But the rest of his house is neat because he managed to keep a wife who takes care of it but obviously never ventures into his shack.     

This old picture came into my head 

That's the dream, here's the reality.

McBryce.

[mansaxel]

It is one of the great mysteries of the universe why the Tek current probes mostly disappear down a black hole while the corresponding amplifiers mostly don't. Consequently, the number of AM503s on offer at the usual auction sites vastly outnumber the number of probes on offer.

It's the same with [hp] 428b current probes. They're also supposedly matched to their instrument, so I was really lucky in getting a matching pair off of Ebay.

[Vince]

ebay and their silly algorithms... "You searched for transistors recently, here's some helpful links to similar products" followed by a list of random auctions for every type of transistor you could think of... 

ebay obviously doen't understand that people don't search for ANY transistor, but a particular part No. Even worse, the search was for a 7912CV linear regulator, NOT a transistor.

McBryce.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is special about it that you have to resort to ebay to find one, rather than buy brand new from any electronic distributor ?
I tried googling for the datasheet but somehow it won't even fine one ?! 
Every time it gives me instead the datasheet for the L79XX series.
I don't know what the prefix ' L ' means... thought maybe LDO, but according to the datasheet, it is not an LDO. So I don't know...

I have a random collection of 50 of these regulators to sort and organize, right now. There is a great variety of prefixes and suffixes and I can't even figure out what they mean. Datasheet are either non existent, or confusing.

For example my datasheet for the L79XX series says that the 'CV' and 'CT' prefixes designate the package type. CV is for T0220 and CT for TO3.
OK... except in my stock I happen to have a few TO220 that are marked 'CT' !     
Some are market  CVT, don't know what that one is.

Some have prefix 'KA'. Like KA7805... Looks like 'K' stuff is a prefix used by Fairchild... but looking at the datasheet for it, it just looks like a regular 7805.

So.. the prefix doesn't necessarily mean anything does it... so how do I know what the prefix 'L' means, in what does it differ from a regular/vanilla/ non 'L' prefix chip ?    Does it even mean anything at all, from an electrical properties perspective that is...

I also have a dozen regulators that have an 'A' suffix. Like 7805A say.
Again the datasheet gives no obvious clue on the front page about what's special about this 'A' suffix.
All I can see, that's obvious, is that they are all branded ' NEC '  AND all come in a special 100% plastic / isolated TO220 package. No metal tab.
So the 'A' might either mean nothing and just be how NEC chose to differentiate their regulator naming, just for the sake of it. Or, the A refers to this plastic/isolated package.
Or.... it refers to whatever electrical characteristic and good luck knowing what it is, as the datasheet sure doesn't make it obvious on the cover page.

I didn't expect something as simple, mundane as 3 pin  regulators to be such a shit show.

It's a huge mess and am not too sure how to go about sorting them now... it drives me completely nuts.
I think what I will do is mix them all. Only sort them by voltage and polarity, and that's it.
I might test them all on a bread board to see if some are LDO, and put these aside from the rest, but that's about it.

If I need something very specific, really very specific, and it's not good enough to pick a random one from my stock, then I guess in this case I can just go buy it brand new, hence I have the datasheet for it so I know what it is exactly.

[mansaxel]

I think you missed my point... to completely repurpose said chill air delivery for keeping Butthead Bob frosty. That said... yes, I know it's silly. That was kinda the whole point.

That won't work, either. BTDTGTTS. (Yes, actually, I've worked in a morgue!)

[med6753]

He's mad.

Not at all.

If anything, I wouldn't have expected the kind of stereotyping and bashing I've seen here over the last day or two. That said, I have a real life and better use for my time and energy.

I'm not bashing Ham Radio. I'm simply reporting what I see and hear. The amateur community does the bashing all by themselves. All one has to do is tune the HF bands and a majority heard is plain jackassery and dumbasses.   

[AVGresponding]

On the occasion of 1554 thanked posts: (see image)

Who gets the connection?

Knowing how broad your fields of interest are, it's not an easy question to answer. Here are a few guesses:





You found/need a 2SC1554 in a TO-247 package

You built/bought a UV laser running at 1554nm

You're commemorating the marriage of Queen Mary I of England to King Philip of Naples.

[Neomys Sapiens]

On the occasion of 1554 thanked posts: (see image)

Who gets the connection?

Knowing how broad your fields of interest are, it's not an easy question to answer. Here are a few guesses:





You found/need a 2SC1554 in a TO-247 package

You built/bought a UV laser running at 1554nm

You're commemorating the marriage of Queen Mary I of England to King Philip of Naples.

Now that was a serious try, but still nope! 

[McBryce]

ebay and their silly algorithms... "You searched for transistors recently, here's some helpful links to similar products" followed by a list of random auctions for every type of transistor you could think of... 

ebay obviously doen't understand that people don't search for ANY transistor, but a particular part No. Even worse, the search was for a 7912CV linear regulator, NOT a transistor.

McBryce.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is special about it that you have to resort to ebay to find one, rather than buy brand new from any electronic distributor ?
I tried googling for the datasheet but somehow it won't even fine one ?! 
Every time it gives me instead the datasheet for the L79XX series.
I don't know what the prefix ' L ' means... thought maybe LDO, but according to the datasheet, it is not an LDO. So I don't know...

I have a random collection of 50 of these regulators to sort and organize, right now. There is a great variety of prefixes and suffixes and I can't even figure out what they mean. Datasheet are either non existent, or confusing.

For example my datasheet for the L79XX series says that the 'CV' and 'CT' prefixes designate the package type. CV is for T0220 and CT for TO3.
OK... except in my stock I happen to have a few TO220 that are marked 'CT' !     
Some are market  CVT, don't know what that one is.

Some have prefix 'KA'. Like KA7805... Looks like 'K' stuff is a prefix used by Fairchild... but looking at the datasheet for it, it just looks like a regular 7805.

So.. the prefix doesn't necessarily mean anything does it... so how do I know what the prefix 'L' means, in what does it differ from a regular/vanilla/ non 'L' prefix chip ?    Does it even mean anything at all, from an electrical properties perspective that is...

I also have a dozen regulators that have an 'A' suffix. Like 7805A say.
Again the datasheet gives no obvious clue on the front page about what's special about this 'A' suffix.
All I can see, that's obvious, is that they are all branded ' NEC '  AND all come in a special 100% plastic / isolated TO220 package. No metal tab.
So the 'A' might either mean nothing and just be how NEC chose to differentiate their regulator naming, just for the sake of it. Or, the A refers to this plastic/isolated package.
Or.... it refers to whatever electrical characteristic and good luck knowing what it is, as the datasheet sure doesn't make it obvious on the cover page.

I didn't expect something as simple, mundane as 3 pin  regulators to be such a shit show.

It's a huge mess and am not too sure how to go about sorting them now... it drives me completely nuts.
I think what I will do is mix them all. Only sort them by voltage and polarity, and that's it.
I might test them all on a bread board to see if some are LDO, and put these aside from the rest, but that's about it.

If I need something very specific, really very specific, and it's not good enough to pick a random one from my stock, then I guess in this case I can just go buy it brand new, hence I have the datasheet for it so I know what it is exactly.

None of the 78xx or 79xx series are LDO, they all have a dropout voltage of 2 to 3V above output. If there's an L in the middle (78Lxx) it's a low current version (up to 500mA I think), but I've no idea what the leading L means.

C stands for the case type, but the V/T is the bulk packing type as far as I remember (Tray / Tube / Roll etc).*

And the reason why I searched on ebay is because a local distributor that I use (Kessler Electronic) have a crap search on their internet page, but offer all their components on ebay too, where it's much easier to find what I am looking for.

McBryce.

*All out of my head as I don't have a datasheet here, so feel free to correct anything that I got wrong.

[bd139]

He's mad.

Not at all.

If anything, I wouldn't have expected the kind of stereotyping and bashing I've seen here over the last day or two. That said, I have a real life and better use for my time and energy.

I'm not bashing Ham Radio. I'm simply reporting what I see and hear. The amateur community does the bashing all by themselves. All one has to do is tune the HF bands and a majority heard is plain jackassery and dumbasses.

Exactly.

If you don't want to be stereotyped, stop being the stereotype 

Just got moving date finally. 1st July. At last 

[Neomys Sapiens]

On the occasion of 1554 thanked posts: (see image)

Who gets the connection?

Oh my, a Sphinx could really fatten up on you guys. So I shall clear it up..
(And I even made it easy by NAMING those connectors instead of letting you find out the series!)
 
MIL-DTL-26500 (before MIL-C-26500) is one of those connector standards which do NOT contain the insert arrangements (pinouts), those are defined separately in MIL-STD-1554!

[mansaxel]

If you don't want to be stereotyped, stop being the stereotype 

Just got moving date finally. 1st July. At last 

The stereotypes do exist here too, but they're exceptions. Mostly.

Good that you've got a moving date. I'm never going to move again. I hope. The time will be when I can't walk the stairs to our bedroom, I suppose.

[Cerebus]

But cutting these labels accurately, again was not that easy... lack of cutting mat and large SS ruler and sharp blade didn't help. It was a chore to do a single A4 card. Ideally I think I will end up buying one day something like this : 

How about something not as heavy-duty but still more than capable of dealing with labels and even some thin card stock:
https://www.grainger.ca/en/product/p/GWN154540?gucid=N:N:FPL:Free:GGL:CSM-1946:tew63h3:20501231

...
But thanks for the URL anyway.. taught me how these things are called in English. So it's a " trimmer", and comes either in a "roller" type, or " blade" type, what I had in mind.

What Al posted we would indeed call a [rotary-]trimmer, but the kind you're looking at we'd call a guillotine, said term covering everything from the small table top type you pictured to the massive powered type I used to use in my printing days that will cut 1000 sheets in one go. It is not obligatory to sit knitting if one is a mere onlooker to their operation.

A large power guillotine, note all the interlocks (dual button operation, IR curtain, etc.) so that you walk away with the same number of hands that you walked up to it with:



 

[med6753]

Just got moving date finally. 1st July. At last 

Good deal. 

If you're going to have a house warming party with booze, strippers, and blow I'm in.  I'll purchase my ticket now. 

[Neomys Sapiens]

IS ANYONE AWARE of a BNC-to-current clamp adaptor (preferably original TEK) being offered for sale?

I have too many AM503's here if that's the sort of thing you are looking for?

Yep, they kind of tend to outlive their counterparts ( A6302,  A6312, A6303).

It is one of the great mysteries of the universe why the Tek current probes mostly disappear down a black hole while the corresponding amplifiers mostly don't. Consequently, the number of AM503s on offer at the usual auction sites vastly outnumber the number of probes on offer.

Incidentally there is a connection. As I'm going to get a TCP202, and while I will still retain a working combination of AM503 and A6302, I have three A6302 of status unknown. I did never dare to test them on one of my two AM503s because I did not want to put the amplifiers to risk.

Now I was thinking about testing them before throwing them at any takers. Therefore the need for the adaptor.

As I said, I am sure that one around this thread got such an adaptor not too long ago, but I can't recall who it was.
If the lucky one was one of the European TEA-gang, he might consider lending me the piece?

[tggzzz]

I'm never going to move again. I hope. The time will be when I can't walk the stairs to our bedroom, I suppose.

My parents retired from a 2 storey house to a 4 storey house. 15 years later they got a stairlift (supposedly the longest in the country!) and it kept them there for 15 years - much more pleasant and cheaper than an old folks home.

[bd139]

Just got moving date finally. 1st July. At last 

Good deal. 

If you're going to have a house warming party with booze, strippers, and blow I'm in.  I'll purchase my ticket now. 

Hadn't got that far through the thought process yet.

I will let you know if I turn into Charlie Sheen in the next few weeks 

[med6753]

475A PSU re-cap.

Got 3 done. 3 more to go. But I have other things to do today so the balance will have to wait.

Seems supply chain issues have hit high value capacitors too. That center is supposed to be 5500uf. Couldn't get either 5500uf or 5600uf. So two 2700uf in parallel.

[mnementh]

On the occasion of 1554 thanked posts: (see image)

Who gets the connection?

Oh my, a Sphinx could really fatten up on you guys. So I shall clear it up..
(And I even made it easy by NAMING those connectors instead of letting you find out the series!)
 
MIL-DTL-26500 (before MIL-C-26500) is one of those connector standards which do NOT contain the insert arrangements (pinouts), those are defined separately in MIL-STD-1554!

But that was my guess! All those connectors are supposed to be that mil-spec family!

EDIT: Oh wait... So you're saying you were specifically talking about the guts of those connectors?

Oh flip... No, definitely gonna call "SHENANIGANS!" on that one, shrew-monger! 

mnem
that's what I get for trying to be clever...