Test Equipment Anonymous

I must say I admire your dedication. It doesn't make me more inclined to be drawn into the world of HP 85XX, but it is admirable. They're strange systems, there's a mix of brilliant design and not so good design. This evening I've run into an issue with the labels, it seems the 8501A is not making ...

Update!

I spotted an ebay listing for the cable that connects the 8501A storage normalizer to the 8505A, it was £40 but they're quite rare…

It arrived and after a bit of jiggling of the innards of the 8501A it is working. Wobbly video link below.

https://flickr.com/photos/synx508/54178653351/

I panicked, perhaps, I think it's still settling down.

And oh dear. I shall be contacting the company tomorrow as I suspect there's a problem, possibly just the active antenna though. It's flipping between being able to see 35+ satellites and use >12 of them and being able to see 20 to 23 satellites and being able to use 3 or 4. I tried substituting the...

I've now got a Leo Bodnar LBE-1420 and I'm pleased with it, very small, does what it was supposed to do, easy to get working. The output level's perhaps a bit excessive so I've reduced it with a 50Ω 6dB attenuator. It's also a square wave output which I've filtered into a reasonable sine, but I was ...

5335As were peak usefulness in HPs counter range. Nothing they did afterwards has the same flexibility. It's a shame they're so large, the box is mostly empty, too. If you want nearly the same stuff in a small box with fewer digits and a life of weird faultfinding then get a RACAL-DANA 1992 3325B At...

It's necessary for all TE forums to have a thread on 5335As, so here goes… aaaaaa.jpg Despite already owning two completely working 5335As and a third parts unit I decided I needed another, as the well known eBay test equipment scrap dealer had been reducing the price every few weeks for what felt l...

Thanks for the circuit diagram, I think I have a slightly different version from a different source. The white stuff is thermal grease that someone clearly applied enthusiastically, I've left this and not cleaned it up at all - the oven part seems fine. The problem was really just the rubber tube ar...

There was a Marconi reference in a cabinet of parts that I bought at Milton Keynes last year, it wasn't working properly so I replaced the trimmer. The rubber tube that Marconi stuck over the little Philips style trimmer had degraded and destroyed the very thing it was intended to protect. The 22pF ...

I'd consider getting rid of the Marconi generators if something better came along. I should've bought a second 2019 or 2019A so I had two the same. I had the opportunity at last year's Wiltshire rally, too, but I'd just bought a HP 3312A and a RACAL counter (the 9916 that I sold this year) and didn'...

I've never calibrated the Solartron, it's as I got it from Stewart of Reading in that respect, all I've done is change the backlight LEDs because the yellow was useless. I sold two 7150s on Sunday, the other was a non-plus version that I've had for about 30 years. That older one was slightly closer ...

Marconi definitely needed an extra button but not four. It turns a clean design into something a bit more confused. Four more buttons to add the ability to set the AF level target voltage seems like it should've set alarm bells ringing but if you think about aesthetics, symmetry, beauty, the groupin...

At yesterday's Rugby radio rally I sold my Solartron 7150 and 7150plus. This pair looked similar but a few of the keys on the keyboard performed different functions and this was a source of mild irritation. Far worse, in my opinion, is the difference between Marconi's 2019 and 2019A. Crimes include ...

The fifth unit, which I've dismantled for spare parts, got given the "bad" attenuator which was missing control of its 20dB and the 40dB section was effectively "open circuit". I dismantled the RF plugin with this attenuator today and tested the attenuator with (perhaps ironicall...

At the Dunstable Downs Radio Club's rally I picked up a Hewlett Packard 8505A system including 8501A normalizer and 8503A 50Ω test set from one of the scrap dealers. He had a few more systems and partial systems but I'd also bought many, many resistors and the Panda was full so I left them. At the M...

Well done. It sounds like a tale with a happy ending. Tants in Racal equipment have caused me grief in the past. They have been very difficult to desolder. Happy enough, I'm happy. I may have exhausted my stock of 47µF and 10µF tantalums and there are still a few that will need changing at some poi...

Well, the RACAL Instruments (rather than RACAL-DANA) 9301A that I bought on Sunday turned out to be very interesting if a little exasperating. I rushed to plug it in when I got home and was pleased to see the power LED light, then less pleased to see it fade away as the 100mA mains fuse opened. I pu...

They do it because they enjoy it. This sums it up, I'm sure I'd enjoy scratch building a steam engine, too. I'd end up picking up lots of skills I wish I had and could probably be spared the recent expense of a new car exhaust system that only needed replacing because it was a bit rusty and a small...

Ha! See post by me at top of previous page involving PS Waverley :) I think that was what prompted me to post. That reminds me of a test equipment enthusiast who vanished some years ago, possibly now deceased. He was known as Archivist on IRC and he had a self-hosted website cataloguing his collect...

Recently, I was asked by my father-in-law, who is an electronic engineer who worked in broadcast TV and video why I keep buying test equipment and what is it that I want to measure? I told him it was sort of like those people who build or restore steam locomotives. That evening I did a bit of Googli...

An even more sekrit forum?! I bet MercedesMan is already in there…

Well, you can't have too many multimeters, can you? Today two Keithley 177 arrived. They should be working, but have to verify that. I suspect they are in a need for some love... Quite a lot yellowing on the case. These are really great meters. Do you have the slightly odd GPIB board that takes up ...

Latest and likely final Wavetek 278 update, I have eliminated the spurious output protection alarm, this was down to the analogue board (referred to as the function generator in the manual) having bad joints on every pin of its Molex power connector *and* having many variable resistors in very much ...