Test Equipment Anonymous

Yummy

I find it helpful if people don't think I can clean up things.

Daughter's (nice pleasant) current lodger is a stroke nurse, with more than a little OCD. Daughter isn't complaining

I'm forbidden from asking her to see my house; she would probably have a fit.

Scrapheap challenge is being rebooted as Zapheap Challenge
https://fullycharged.show/zapheap/

... presuming that's not merely seeing how many people salute a rag up a flagpole.

I haven't had a problem with the Petolta connectors, mainly because they are open frame so you can see whether the solid core is entering the inner socket correctly. If that wasn't the case then it would be easy to push a bit too hard and terminally (ho ho) bend the solid core. Peltola, definitely ...

On balance I'm glad I didn't spot that one. I did come away with a Tek 465 which is still in the car. I've been investigating a Wavetek function generator which came from there. I always feel a sense of relief when those Peltola connectors fit back successfully. They look very easy to damage. I hav...

Overall I quite liked my 468, but not enough to prevent me flogging it. The analogue part is a 465B, which is a good start. The digitising part is slow but not based on a CCD sampler, thus avoiding slow sweep speed aliasing problems. Indeed, it even has an "envelope detect" mode that would...

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 12, 2025 9:03 pm No harm, no foul, the cat landed on it's feet.

I was under the impression that was part of their design specification - or is it merely emergent behaviour?

Amusingly horrifying?
Horrifyingly amusing?

My first 465 was sufficiently bright to act as a torch. I was concerned about localise heating damaging the CRT, so only operated it defocused. In the end I found the grid was disconnected inside the CRT, hence replacement required. IIRC the DM44s have an interesting filter, just an opamp and capaci...

tek 1502 with crt. never saw one actually used in the rain. did see one used at Ft Benning to find an aerial splice case that had been replaced with a trash bag, and as a result was full of rainwater. (around 1986, right after outside plant maintenance was contracted out). Nice little things, apart...

What's the TDR distance resolution? Can it be stored a foot underwater and used in driving rain?

Here's a 485 blue screen, for your delectation...

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 06, 2025 7:58 pm The front panel cleaned up very nicely however the mild cleaner I used took some of the lettering off a few push button switches.

I forget which 4x5 scope it was, but ISTR the universal solvent did that. Dihdrogen monoxide, of course.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 06, 2025 7:58 pm The front panel cleaned up very nicely however the mild cleaner I used took some of the lettering off a few push button switches.

I forget which 4x5 scope it was, but ISTR the universal solvent did that. Dihdrogen monoxide, of course.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 04, 2025 5:52 pm

tggzzz wrote: ↑Fri Jul 04, 2025 4:54 pm Blue is good.

C911 and other beads on that rail aren't (or soon won't be) good.

That and at least 2 dozen other bloody tants.

That half dozen are difficult to find on the boards and even scattered across several schematics, and are 15V on a 13V rail.

The main PSU is easy by comparison!

Blue is good.

C911 and other beads on that rail aren't (or soon won't be) good.

MED6753 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 28, 2025 9:05 pm

tggzzz wrote: ↑Sat Jun 28, 2025 7:02 pm And today's xkcd involves cats: https://xkcd.com/3108

Harley indeed goes nuts over laser pointers.

So does daughter's dog, for the same reasons.

And that loops back to: viewtopic.php?p=8355#p8355

And today's xkcd involves cats: https://xkcd.com/3108

From https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220614.html

Satellites are well tracked as is space junk. Commercial airliners also usually fly on predictable paths. Military aircraft are a different, but much rarer problem. It can't be all that difficult to manage time on the telescope to accommodate these things. Anyway, large numbers of satellites have b...

Exposure take 30s, which is relatively fast: https://rubinobservatory.org/explore/how-rubin-works/numbers . Nonetheless there will be trails, of course. "Time on telescope" is a scarce resource, so I imagine people will be reluctant to take the same picture multiple times. But what do I k...

I'm having difficulty understanding how you can find/select the interesting objects to examine. So many pixels, and interesting objects are often only a few pixels in size. Ditto how starlink trails are removed. To partially answer my own questions: https://skyviewer.app/explorer If you take the gu...

Remove starlink trails: I'd say, take some pictures shortly after, combine them and remove the starlink patterns. Perhaps a similar approach would work for finding interesting objects. Exposure take 30s, which is relatively fast: https://rubinobservatory.org/explore/how-rubin-works/numbers . Noneth...

I'm having difficulty understanding how you can find/select the interesting objects to examine. So many pixels, and interesting objects are often only a few pixels in size.

Ditto how starlink trails are removed.

Wearable item. With the exception of Superman (who is famously sartorially confused), walking down a street wearing only pants can be grounds for being arrested. The parks will be full of semi-naked Poms working on their melanoma! Heatwave for the Poms seem now sent to the Yanks in NY where 34C is ...

it has been 29C here, 33C near London, looks like bits of France hit 38C. Definitely pants[1] and beer weather. RH is 50-60% so relatively tolerable. No aircon, unless you count an electric fan. [1] UK meaning, of course. What is the UK meaning of "pants"? Pants as in a wearable item or p...

it has been 29C here, 33C near London, looks like bits of France hit 38C. Definitely pants[1] and beer weather. RH is 50-60% so relatively tolerable.

No aircon, unless you count an electric fan.

[1] UK meaning, of course.