Test Equipment Anonymous

spent some time noodling with the new SA gadget. it is pretty impressive for a $130 doodad that will fit in a shirt pocket.

fed both the tinysa ultra and the hp 8569b with an 8406a comb generator modulated with its internal 1 Mhz oscillator or an hp 651a modified for 50 ohm output impedance.

pic1 is a 50 Mhz wide sweep centered at 1200Mhz. comb generator was set for 10hz with 1Mhz AM modulation.

pic 2 is the 1200Mhz tooth modulated with 20Khz.

pic 3 is a 500Mhz wide sweep centered at 1200Mhz (the level ripple is probably caused by a crap jumper cable. any level variation in other sweeps may also be caused by crap cable)

pic 4 is the 100Mhz cal signal from the 8569b.

found it is probably a good idea to stick a 20dB attenuator in front of the tinysa to prevent large out of sweep signals from creating spurs.

edit did some noodling up to 5Ghz and the tiny ultra seems to perform ok up there too.

edit 2 never owned the original tinysa......but the screen on this one seems just big enough for comfortable viewing (with dollar store reading glasses)

edit 3 for some reason the pictures are in opposite order. pic 4 is at the top.

Yup. I've used my tinySA to search out all sorts of weird signals; not just WiFi.

As you say, better than it has a right to be for the price.

mnem
boo.

Very interesting comparision.
The tinysa is better than nothing and very handy but clearly poor performance compared to a very old real spectrum analyser. Very poor local oscillator performance is evident from distortion of levels close in to signal.

Robert.

Robert wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 12:46 pm Very interesting comparision.
The tinysa is better than nothing and very handy but clearly poor performance compared to a very old real spectrum analyser. Very poor local oscillator performance is evident from distortion of levels close in to signal.

Robert.

yep. some things will be beyond the performance ability of the tinysa. tried to use it the other day to see the 1dB dip from an in line 536a gumball frequency meter at about 1.2 Ghz.......absolutely frickin' useless. but it was a breeze to see it on the 8569b.

on the other hand. the tinysa is sweeeeeet when the truck is parked in the driveway with 6 antennas mounted in the bed, and you need to make sure everything is working before you tilt the mast down and head up the mountain. that's when it is the best 130 bucks you ever spent.

BUT no way is it gonna' match a 60lb monster SA packed full of real precision parts and yig goodness. (not to mention the pure joy you get from adjusting the top knob on that cavity meter.....smoooooooooth and sexy.)

It seems like a remarkably good product, bearing in mind those three magic words, "for", "the" and "price".

Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 2:26 pm It seems like a remarkably good product, bearing in mind those three magic words, "for", "the" and "price".

I agree. TinySA and NanoVNA devices make spectrum and network analyzers available to many people who’d otherwise never have access to such equipment. If one didn’t have access to equipment in the labs at educational facilities or employers, it came down to spending serious money on the used market or having the good luck of stumbling on a fantastic deal. Now if someone wants to get started with a spectrum analyzer, they just need to go online and order a TinySA and wait for it to be delivered. They’re not great but they’re available and affordable so if it’s a choice between that and not at all, I wouldn’t fault anyone for it.

One other good thing about TinySAs being so affordable is they can be used as sacrificial test subjects, especially for people who are just getting started. It’s a lot cheaper to destroy a TinySA by accident in a situation where there’s some uncertainty about what’s going to land on the input and replace it than the repair costs after damaging the front end of a good quality HP or R&S etc. and repair it.

Well some people would disagree with you about "That YIG goodness" - people who've had a YIG oscillator fail.

Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 6:23 pm Well some people would disagree with you about "That YIG goodness" - people who've had a YIG oscillator fail.

have owned 8555a's, an 8569b, and various 8620 plug in modules with yigs and never had one go tits up. (maybe i am just lucky?)

since i never got to work on one it motivated me to dig an avantek 8-12 Ghz yig out of a junk box and home brew it into a plug in for an old junker 8620. is it as good as a bought plug in from bill and dave? no.....but it works pretty damn good. (have used it to sweep out feeds and antennas for a buddys 10 Ghz moon bounce rig and it got the job done). and i learned a boat load about how a yig works.

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:25 am

Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 6:23 pm Well some people would disagree with you about "That YIG goodness" - people who've had a YIG oscillator fail.

have owned 8555a's, an 8569b, and various 8620 plug in modules with yigs and never had one go tits up. (maybe i am just lucky?)

since i never got to work on one it motivated me to dig an avantek 8-12 Ghz yig out of a junk box and home brew it into a plug in for an old junker 8620. is it as good as a bought plug in from bill and dave? no.....but it works pretty damn good. (have used it to sweep out feeds and antennas for a buddys 10 Ghz moon bounce rig and it got the job done). and i learned a boat load about how a yig works.

Ah. Doing more with less. Good hack.

I love the hacker ethic, even if (or perhaps because) it does merge into hilbilly engineering sometimes.

Ah. Doing more with less. Good hack.

I love the hacker ethic, even if (or perhaps because) it does merge into hilbilly engineering sometimes.





oh great.....thanks buddy......now every time i look at that sweeper "dueling banjos" will be going thru my head.

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:25 am

Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 6:23 pm Well some people would disagree with you about "That YIG goodness" - people who've had a YIG oscillator fail.

have owned 8555a's, an 8569b, and various 8620 plug in modules with yigs and never had one go tits up. (maybe i am just lucky?)

since i never got to work on one it motivated me to dig an avantek 8-12 Ghz yig out of a junk box and home brew it into a plug in for an old junker 8620. is it as good as a bought plug in from bill and dave? no.....but it works pretty damn good. (have used it to sweep out feeds and antennas for a buddys 10 Ghz moon bounce rig and it got the job done). and i learned a boat load about how a yig works.

This came to me through an acquaintance (well at least he was 20 years back), at one time very active on the vintage/junk electronics scene in the UK and with his eye to business. Since I've seen him lamenting a couple times on the WWW about 8xxx series SAs with failed YIG oscillators he's bought. Dunno. My idea of having fun with junk, (I mean vintage TE, a significant and underestimated part of our cultural and economic heritage) starts to meet hard going at £50, and peters out completely at £250. HP SAs seldom fit that. Apart from bragging rights, I can't see much need for a 5GHz plus SA anyway.

Another thing I heard in a phone call with a well known instrument dealer in the UK, a straight shooter who doesn't like selling rubbish, is that he has a load of HP SAs building up because they have broken plastic bits (knobs, cams and gears) which make the thing useless. Maybe he hasn't heard of ebay or 3D printers.

Having no direct experience, it's just hearsay, but it makes me reluctant to play in the game.

Hill Billy engineering? Modern parts and techniques can make some things easily possible for low cost that were unthinkable even 20 years back. Some of the sainted Jim Williams' demonstration circuits worked very well, but were not exactly pretty.

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 8:10 pm Ah. Doing more with less. Good hack.

I love the hacker ethic, even if (or perhaps because) it does merge into hilbilly engineering sometimes.





oh great.....thanks buddy......now every time i look at that sweeper "dueling banjos" will be going thru my head.

I'll give you McGyuver if you prefer.

Now that's not the 80yo stripper, but ...

But if you want something disturbing about that scene, consider that the banjo was being played by someone else's arms, the player being hidden behind the actor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Redden

have seen that movie many times, but never heard that story.

when backpacking up state we always joked around the campfire about coming across a banjo playing albino. sort of a let down to know that the slack-jawed backwoods yokels probably can't actually play the banjo.

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 1:57 am have seen that movie many times, but never heard that story.

when backpacking up state we always joked around the campfire about coming across a banjo playing albino. sort of a let down to know that the slack-jawed backwoods yokels probably can't actually play the banjo.

I only heard it a few weeks ago. I wouldn't be able to tell whether the wackypedia article was correct or "faction".

nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 1:57 am have seen that movie many times, but never heard that story.

when backpacking up state we always joked around the campfire about coming across a banjo playing albino. sort of a let down to know that the slack-jawed backwoods yokels probably can't actually play the banjo.

I've joked for a long time about how the movie Deliverance is a documentary about the town I live in. None of the jerks here can carry a tune in a bucket, much less play a banjo, but one of these useless clunks left a supermarket trolley on my neighbour's front lawn yesterday in the wee small hours of the morning.



I saw it there when I went to leave for work in the morning. I'm not sure if it's a commentary about the town, the person who left it there, or that awful neighbour who has since let it sit right there where it was left. It's going to be interesting to see what becomes of it but it's pretty illustrative about how trashy this place is.

Squeal like a piggy!

could have been worse. what if the cart had contained a dead possum? or a bowling bag with a human head inside?

"always look on the bright side of your life"

Yeeeeah.... I'm not going to try and get inside your head on that one... I 'spect it's dark and squishy and scary in there, and smells like wet dog...

mnem
*toddles off to probe a printer*