Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[bd139]

The only things I know about Azerbaijan are those baths that it was an early "oil capital", and that the modern architecture in Baku makes Donald Trump look restrained and tasteful.

If I was young enough to go to silly places, I think it would be places in the Himalaya and one of the old Silk Roads.

Hmmm. Micromorts being what they are, which is your insurance company?

That is a very very accurate observation.

I've done some of a Silk Road already. It was full of Chinese labelled articulated lorries swerving around donkeys having an amble in the middle of the road.

Insurance company is World Nomads https://www.worldnomads.com/ - they will cover weird destinations including the US and I know people who have made claims and they were exceptionally good at getting them out of the crap.

That's cheap insurance! It wouldn't give me any worthwhile cover

The Chinese are building railways under their belt and braces road initiative, which should reduce the artics. Don't know how the Russia invasion of Ukraine will affect that.

It's not really. My travel insurance for me and the eldest to Malta was £8 in comparison. WN is a LOT more than that

Well considering Chinese banks just froze out Russian assets today apparently they'll just buy the country next week for a few quid and be done with it.

[bd139]

Roos and Emus are small beer.

Cassowaries, numerous deadly snakes, Funnel Web spiders, gympie-gympie trees and that's just on land. In the water there are Salt Water crocodiles, Great White sharks, Box Jellyfish, Blue Ringed octopuses, sea snakes even more venomous than their land dwelling cousins, and no doubt other horrors.

You are in greater danger from "city-block long" Road trains, Klingons blasting you off into the mulga when they pass at 2/3rds light speed, drunks, cattle grids, car sized bulls, feral camels, tourists, etc,
An ancient GEC issued Webley wouldn't help much with those things.

It was a bit of a leg pull. South Africans find it funny that Europeans are very concerned about snakes. They are aware of them and don't do things that ask for trouble, but they are not constantly worried about snakes. It also depends a lot on where you are.

If you go to South Africa these days, you have far more immediate concerns than being bitten by a snake.

I work with South Africans. Their principal concerns are when the power is going out, carjacking and looting.

[tggzzz]

That is a very very accurate observation.

I've done some of a Silk Road already. It was full of Chinese labelled articulated lorries swerving around donkeys having an amble in the middle of the road.

Insurance company is World Nomads https://www.worldnomads.com/ - they will cover weird destinations including the US and I know people who have made claims and they were exceptionally good at getting them out of the crap.

That's cheap insurance! It wouldn't give me any worthwhile cover

The Chinese are building railways under their belt and braces road initiative, which should reduce the artics. Don't know how the Russia invasion of Ukraine will affect that.

It's not really. My travel insurance for me and the eldest to Malta was £8 in comparison. WN is a LOT more than that

Well considering Chinese banks just froze out Russian assets today apparently they'll just buy the country next week for a few quid and be done with it.

My travel insurance for a week in Croatia doing nothing abnormal was ~£80

Can't see what you are referring to w.r.t. China and Russian assets. The old quip was that "Russia is an oil well with its own flag".

[Zenith]

I work with South Africans. Their principal concerns are when the power is going out, carjacking and looting.

When I was there over 20 years back, Cape Town was incredibly violent with armed burglaries and muggings. I was told by someone who employed people from those parts, that you could buy an AK47 and 20 rounds for about £5 in the townships. Cape Town was the Land of the Lotus Eaters. Johannesburg was much worse. Since then it's all become very much worse. Electricity was cheap and and the supply was reliable.

Friends decided to leave after they'd been burgled. A statue in the garden was used as a battering ram to break down the substantial front door. One of them was slashed with a knife and received serious injuries. Then there were the power cuts. There's big market there for generators. You know, we do assume that we have reliable mains power. Most shops couldn't operate without it.

[tggzzz]

I remember seeing a (?Louis Theroux?) documentary about South Africa beyond Cape Town.

One segment was about somebody who had developed a heavily armoured vehicle. Amongst other things, it spat fire from near it's wheels, to deter carjackers.

[vk6zgo]

Roos and Emus are small beer.

Cassowaries, numerous deadly snakes, Funnel Web spiders, gympie-gympie trees and that's just on land. In the water there are Salt Water crocodiles, Great White sharks, Box Jellyfish, Blue Ringed octopuses, sea snakes even more venomous than their land dwelling cousins, and no doubt other horrors.

You are in greater danger from "city-block long" Road trains, Klingons blasting you off into the mulga when they pass at 2/3rds light speed, drunks, cattle grids, car sized bulls, feral camels, tourists, etc,
An ancient GEC issued Webley wouldn't help much with those things.

Doesn't it rather depend on where you are? I doubt you see many Cassowaries and salties in Perth. For me I suspect the most dangerous aspect would be the AT apparent temperature. While Perth is a reasonable 12C, Wyndham. Kununurra and Fitzroy Crossing (all in Kimberley and Pilbar) are >37C. In winter. Ugh.

For Europeans it is difficult to realise how large Australia is. My daughter, who spent 6 months travelling up the East coast and down through the interior, sent me a postcard to drive the point home (ho ho)

!2C is shivering territory!

Much of Oz is North of the "Tropic of Capricorn", so is increasingly affected by the strange "Monsoon" seasons common to that part of the world.
The facile way is to say that Perth's Winter roughly corresponds to the "Dry" season in Wyndham, when the latter gets seriously hot, but it isn't quite that simple.
I remember being in Wyndham just before Christmas in 1967 & it was still scaldingly hot & dry, with the "Wet" setting in a few weeks later, & tapering off about halfway through the Southern Winter.

As far as not thinking about how large distances are, it works both ways.
I was in Southampton UK for nearly a year, in 1971/72, & my concept of European seasons were formed there.
On another trip in September 1974, I got off the plane in Rome & travelled by train up to France then Ferry to England.

Dressing for a Southampton September, which was the cold, windy, onset of Autumn, I arrived in Rome when it was "100 degrees in the waterbag" as the old saying goes, so was somewhat overdressed!!

[bd139]

That's cheap insurance! It wouldn't give me any worthwhile cover

The Chinese are building railways under their belt and braces road initiative, which should reduce the artics. Don't know how the Russia invasion of Ukraine will affect that.

It's not really. My travel insurance for me and the eldest to Malta was £8 in comparison. WN is a LOT more than that

Well considering Chinese banks just froze out Russian assets today apparently they'll just buy the country next week for a few quid and be done with it.

My travel insurance for a week in Croatia doing nothing abnormal was ~£80

Can't see what you are referring to w.r.t. China and Russian assets. The old quip was that "Russia is an oil well with its own flag".

Not sure how long ago that was. Travel insurance went down a hell of a lot in recent years.

Point was China will probably just buy any objections away at this point.

[bd139]

I remember seeing a (?Louis Theroux?) documentary about South Africa beyond Cape Town.

One segment was about somebody who had developed a heavily armoured vehicle. Amongst other things, it spat fire from near it's wheels, to deter carjackers.

[tggzzz]

I remember seeing a (?Louis Theroux?) documentary about South Africa beyond Cape Town.

One segment was about somebody who had developed a heavily armoured vehicle. Amongst other things, it spat fire from near it's wheels, to deter carjackers.

My recollection is the vehicle was more heavily armoured. Maybe the concept has been "multiply reinvented".

[mnementh]

mnem
You have been warned.

[Robert]

That's only 10 miles from where I was for work last month. I had spare time but also Covid 19 so wasn't visiting anywhere. Maybe next time...

[mnementh]

SWAPMEET_DAY.jpg

mnem
abandon hope, all ye who enter here...

[MED6753]

Here's a rare one. A Dumont 2100GA portable scope. Dumont Labs was bought by Fairchild in 1960 but the writing at the bottom of the scope says "Dumont Oscilloscope Labs". I've never seen or heard of any Dumont scope much past the early 1960's. From what little info I can find this one dates from the 1970's and has a vertical response of 10MHz.

This one is for sale on Facebook Marketplace and no.....I'm not interested.

[Zenith]

SWAPMEET_DAY.jpg

mnem
abandon hope, all ye who enter here...

Depends on the swapmeet. Sometimes the ones where you have found treasures aplenty previously turn up nothing. Occasionally the ones you only go to because they are close, produce a magnificent haul.

I think of it as being like fishing. Even the best waters on a bad day will produce nothing. Skill and experience help, but if the fish don't want to bite, they won't. A small brook on a good day can provide magnificent sport.

[Zenith]

Here's a rare one. A Dumont 2100GA portable scope. Dumont Labs was bought by Fairchild in 1960 but the writing at the bottom of the scope says "Dumont Oscilloscope Labs". I've never seen or heard of any Dumont scope much past the early 1960's. From what little info I can find this one dates from the 1970's and has a vertical response of 10MHz.

This one is for sale on Facebook Marketplace and no.....I'm not interested.

DuMont is a name I've heard of from the early days of oscilloscopes. Cossor is another.

http://www.oscopes.info/background/2265 ... milestones

Neither of them were able to keep up the pace.

You might like giving this a look.

https://www.oscilloscopemuseum.org/

I rescued a Cossor 1049 once. It was on its way to the dump. It was huge and heavy and of no practical use at all, as well as being in a tatty state. I removed the valves and took it to the dump. I'm glad someone cherishes these unwanted leviathans.

[bd139]

They made some fairly ok ones later on into the early 1980s. Up to 100MHz dual trace delayed sweep.

Also I used to work for Cossor back in the day. Mostly full of people who hadn't got over themselves yet

[Zenith]

Cossor had a distinguished history, being important in the development of CROs and radar. They made a fair amount of test equipment of various sorts. They came unstuck around 1960 over disputes concerning the Fylingdales early warning system and were bought by Raytheon, who were presumably interested in their radar expertise and relationship with the military. Raytheon acquired a number of other companies over the years and in 2020 merged with United Technologies. Cossor may still exist as a division or brand name within that huge company.

Cossor 60s/70s/80s scopes turn up regularly on ebay. I've never been tempted. I don't see them at swapmeets, or at least they haven't registered. One or two look as if they were made for the military with CTxxx type names.

The oscilloscope market in the 60s to the 80s was crowded. Marconi, Solartron, Advance, Dynamco, Telequipment, Roband, SE Labs, Scopex, Heathkit and a string of US and European, and later, Japanese contenders.

[mnementh]

Calling Cubdriver... calling Cubdriver...

Been here all morning; everybody's pretty much gone. Did I walk right past and not recognize you?

mnem

[bd139]

Cossor had a distinguished history, being important in the development of CROs and radar. They made a fair amount of test equipment of various sorts. They came unstuck around 1960 over disputes concerning the Fylingdales early warning system and were bought by Raytheon, who were presumably interested in their radar expertise and relationship with the military. Raytheon acquired a number of other companies over the years and in 2020 merged with United Technologies. Cossor may still exist as a division or brand name within that huge company.

Cossor is completely dead now and the brand abandoned. A Mr Tonkin bought cossor.co.uk, a domain I had an email address on once, to run a site about radios. He was wondering what all the bounced email was . I'm sure some of it was probably quite interesting! In 2001 there was a hard rebrand to Raytheon Systems Limited and an evisceration of traditional Cossor engineering processes. These were replaced with Americanised training programmes and Six Sigma. Just after 2001's events involving the WTC, the new blood in the org was gleefully clapping at the incoming business. Many people took retirement instantly and the remaining lot of us were rather disgusted and fucked off elsewhere. By then I was already handling their internal ERP system and CAD systems (HP CoCreate Workmanager / ME10) so I leveraged that to piss off and go work for a software startup. Glad I did. Think I did 5 years there which was too long. There was no room to move, learn or develop.

Cossor 60s/70s/80s scopes turn up regularly on ebay. I've never been tempted. I don't see them at swapmeets, or at least they haven't registered. One or two look as if they were made for the military with CTxxx type names.

They were very very well made and quite reliable but not terrific performers.

The oscilloscope market in the 60s to the 80s was crowded. Marconi, Solartron, Advance, Dynamco, Telequipment, Roband, SE Labs, Scopex, Heathkit and a string of US and European, and later, Japanese contenders.

SE Labs made a couple of nice ones but you don't see those much. It's mostly the bottom end stuff that was hobby / TV repair that ends up on the market.

[Zenith]

Cossor 60s/70s/80s scopes turn up regularly on ebay. I've never been tempted. I don't see them at swapmeets, or at least they haven't registered. One or two look as if they were made for the military with CTxxx type names.

They were very very well made and quite reliable but not terrific performers.

The oscilloscope market in the 60s to the 80s was crowded. Marconi, Solartron, Advance, Dynamco, Telequipment, Roband, SE Labs, Scopex, Heathkit and a string of US and European, and later, Japanese contenders.

SE Labs made a couple of nice ones but you don't see those much. It's mostly the bottom end stuff that was hobby / TV repair that ends up on the market.

I've been through a Hameg phase and Hitachi are still interesting and good scopes. Philips and a few others I've not touched. There's enough Tek and HP around to keep me busy and they are well documented. SE Labs and a few others, with delay sweep from the 60s/70s - interesting up to a fiver, with an eye on various bits, such as multiturn pots, monolithic matched FET pairs and TDs. It's shocking realising you are a Philistine, but there we are.

[bd139]

I'm not ashamed to say I've bought kit just to steal the bits out of it.

[Zenith]

Yeah, especially if it's tatty. Unlike the vintage radio/TV/audio scene, there's not much sentimentality when it comes to TE - no re-stuffing electrolytics with modern ones to preserve appearance, for instance.

Sometimes I've bought things for the case. It's usually been something specialised, obscure and on sale for a couple of quid. You get a decent case, with an IEC connector and fuseholder It's probably got feet and a bail handle. If your luck's in the transformer is useful. The front panel can be replaced with a sheet of aluminium. Buying a new case of the same quality would be £££s painful. It may even yield a few useful obsolete components.

At Telford last weekend I was tempted to buy a Tek 7400 series scope with plugins for £10 to take to bits. A bit big and heavy though.

[Zenith]

Calling Cubdriver... calling Cubdriver...

Been here all morning; everybody's pretty much gone. Did I walk right past and not recognize you?

mnem

What prizes did you come away with?

[bd139]

Yeah, especially if it's tatty. Unlike the vintage radio/TV/audio scene, there's not much sentimentality when it comes to TE - no re-stuffing electrolytics with modern ones to preserve appearance, for instance.

Sometimes I've bought things for the case. It's usually been something specialised, obscure and on sale for a couple of quid. You get a decent case, with an IEC connector and fuseholder It's probably got feet and a bail handle. If your luck's in the transformer is useful. The front panel can be replaced with a sheet of aluminium. Buying a new case of the same quality would be £££s painful. It may even yield a few useful obsolete components.

At Telford last weekend I was tempted to buy a Tek 7400 series scope with plugins for £10 to take to bits. A bit big and heavy though.

I'd have bought that Tek

Sometimes I'm disappointed when stuff works because I wanted the parts out of it and I don't have the heart to eviscerate it.

[Zenith]

I'd have bought that Tek

Sometimes I'm disappointed when stuff works because I wanted the parts out of it and I don't have the heart to eviscerate it.

IIRC there were four, and half a dozen plugins separately. He was there to get rid. You could have made him an offer, say £20 for the lot. There were a few sack trucks around, so no problems taking them to the car, but maybe a hernia lifting them and dealing with them at the other end.

I'd scored yet another, very clean but not working, 475 for a fiver. Front cover and even the rear feet are more or less undamaged. Its document pouch was bulging with probes; five respectable 250MHz numbers and four 70MHz ones. So my appetite for junk was sated. On another day I might have come away with one or more of those 7000 series.