Test Equipment Anonymous

Looks like I've opened up another TimeNut rabbit hole (wormhole?). Interest mounted as I read. A hydrogen maser! A caesium fountain clock! I read on. The master is a Gents Pulsynetic but I don't know the exact model. What a let down. Some TimeNut you turn out to be. Can't wait to see what turns up....

Latest & the greatest!---- I knew I could log onto this forum using VPN pretending to be from another country. The one I tried first stopped working so I tried several others, which worked. All good, but "just for shits & giggles" I tried putting Australia in as the country, assumi...

Just recently the two high power AM transmitters in Perth, WA, 6WF & 6RN have been shut down, & have gone to FM (DAB+ was apparently not even considered). I think there is still one service from the site still in operation on MF AM, but that will probably go, too. The developers are already ...

I really have no idea. I think it is something to do with this version of W11 or the ISP, as currently, the only new thing that has been initiated in Oz is the over 16 ID requirement, to try to stop kids from from being groomed by ISIS, the KKK, or similar, ohh, and porn, (which gets the "Godbo...

Something interesting?---at least to me!. I'm Baaack! After my PC locked me out of this forum months ago, (it would just sit there churning then time out), I tried multiple methods to no avail, so have been forced to be bored sick on the rest of the 'Net. The "other place" has become "...

Then I thought, who could possibly justify using what must have been a ludicrously expensive valve like this? Tek! In the early 60s their scopes must have cost as much as a modest house. Other rules of thumb... In the 90s, the computer you wanted cost £1500. In the 80s, a reasonable spectrum analys...

I was hoping someone might come up with an example of the use of an E810F. And another one I've never seen a use for is E55L. I have some of both. It was used as the output tube in the vertical power amplifier of the 581A/585A. Except they called it the 7788. I thought everyone knew that :-). https...

I've been known to take one to hamfests, to see whether cables were 50 or 52 ohms 52 ohm? I used 75 for baseband video at the Beeb. 50 ohm is de rigeur for most RF stuff. Nuclear energy spectrometry is 91 ohm. But 52 ohm? Just different compromises----another was 51.5 ohm! When we dragged the 1959 ...

bd139 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 9:27 pm I’ve wrestled a 7L12 before.

Hours of fun!

Even when they are fully functional, as this one happily seems to be, they are not "user friendly".
It is bit like having a performing bear!

Distinctly! For the price, the 7603 is a bargain, & the other stuff is just the icing on the cake! As a bonus, the Kenwood radio that had stopped working somehow fell off the bench & now works. In earlier times, that would have triggered an intensive investigation to find the original proble...

Update on the 7S12 TDR thingy:- It appears that the S52 pulse generator works, as looking at its output with the BWD 845 shows a waveform like the ones shown various places on the Internet. Unfortunately, as the Dual Timebase is faulty on the BWD, I can't look at rise time properly, but using the fa...

A few more musings & actual doings- The 7L12 seems to be usable pretty much as it is, even if it is a bit out of spec. In one of my old jobs, the one we had was very useful, as after I worked around its "clunkiness" I was able to use it to troubleshoot really strange things, like an in...

Been having a bit more of a play with the devices I got at the Hamfest. The 7L12 seems to be OK--it is clunky as hell to use, but they were like that 30 years ago. Earlier, I was suspicious as to whether the 50MHz cal signal was on frequency, so dragged out the "Victor" frequency counter, ...

Oh yea.....lots of unwashed grubby looking hobos sitting at a table with coffee and donuts. Is it a requirement that hams must look like they come out of the cellar once a year? :roll: Amateur radio is an ageing hobby in the UK, so there aren't that many young people at these events. There's a type...

Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Aug 14, 2025 9:47 am The TF2700 is a bit clunky but they do work. I haven't used mine in 20 years.

I'm sure when they came out the ads claimed they could measure the inductance of a paper clip.

Back in the day, at my old work, they were the "go to" bridge!

TD pulse generators were used for cable fault location, e.g. Tek 1502. Operates in driving rain, has a unique shorting BNC connector to discharge static on cables, used in Patriot missiles batteries. My 1971 Philips 1.7GHz sampling scope has a 2GHz FET in the trigger circuits, BC107s elsewhere. We ...

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...

Based on this thread, shouldn't we declare Fluke products as a crap shoot..... Gimme a mo to grab my hat and coat.... We are talking about bench DMMs about 50 years old, which were probably designed with a design life of maybe 10 years in mind. Then they sold for $$$s painful and now are bought for...

Test set up: 2465 set to 50 ohm input. 75 ohm output on the generator. Why hp chose 75 ohm is a mystery to me. The results. Drum roll..... So the symmetry issue is finally fixed. All that's left to do is calibrate the frequency dial. There are adjustments for each range so it should fall into place...

The delayed delivery is reminiscent of trying to obtain replacement parts from the EU or UK in the 1980s & '90s. We could have sworn that a fast 1800s style "windjammer" service would have got them to Western Australia faster! EU & UK manufacturers complained that "nobody in A...

There's The Roundhouse in Fremantle. https://emmajaneexplores.com/visiting-fremantle-round-house/ It was built as a prison in the 1830s, but it was used for storage later on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOIpzSQq_Wk The Youtube video is only four minutes long. It gives good views of the courtyar...

Curious; I don't remember one. Was it in Southampton? That would mildly surprise me since most of Southampton city centre and docks were extensively redeveloped[1] by the Luftwaffe. The nearest I can see is https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1339976 but that is stated to be ...

When I went to Southampton UK back in the day, one of the interesting sights was a warehouse from the mid 1400s, which was notable for some other reason now lost in the mists of receding memories. What struck me was that it was virtually indistinguishable from some made in Fremantle WA in the 1840s...

100 miles vs. 100 years. My house in 95 years old. My parents house was 170 years old. Then we get to old houses. I enjoy walking down streets 2000 years old, and sitting on rocks placed in a circle by people completely forgotten to time who spoke in an unknown (and forevermore unkowable) language....

Seventeen & "a bit" hours flight from Perth WA to Heathrow, an 8 hour drive to Dunoon, then back again. On top of that, the airline might not let me take it as luggage, so perhaps not--I'm getting way too old for this shit!