Anyone who likes to experiment with electronics, especially radio equipment, simply can’t go wrong buying an oscilloscope. I recently picked up a Hantek DSO2D15 for about $200. on Amazon. It goes to 150 MHz and works great! I did several tests with tones and RF and it picks up every waveform accuarately. It even has a built-in signal generate that’s pretty accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also picked up an spectrum analyzer. When I became a ham, such a device was quite expensive and few hams had them. I bought a Zeenko TinySA Ultra+ for about $180 on Amazon. It scans from daylight to 6 GHz and includes a signal generator as well. It has a very sensitive input. If I have an antenna connected to it and key up any of my HTs on high power, the unit could be destroyed. It actually came with a 50 dB attenuator rated at 50 watts. I normally keep the attenuater inline between the antenna and the RF input so as to not damage the unit. I have two DMR hotspots in the office, each putting out about 10 mw on 70 cm. With the attenuator in place, they show up fine and on frequency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scope and spectrum analyzer came with a lot of features I was not expecting. The scope has a measurement button that will display measurements of just about everything that has to do with a waveform. It has an “Auto Set” button that automatically selects the best v\/div, s\/div, and trigger to make a nice waveform. It even way to decode signals, like from a serial port. How cool is that? The spectrum analyzer includes a headphone jack so that I can listen to a signal if I want. It even has software that runs on Linux so I can plug it into the computer and control it from there. The scope has simiar software but it only runs on Windows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve been a ham for over 30 years and I’ve always wanted a good scope and spectrum analyzer. Thanks to advances in technology, one can now buy very good instruments for a great price. Sure, they aren’t exactly “lab grade”, but they get the job done for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyone who likes to experiment with electronics, especially radio equipment, simply can’t go wrong buying an oscilloscope. I recently picked up a Hantek DSO2D15 for about $200. on Amazon. It goes to 150 MHz and works great! I did several tests with tones and RF and it picks up every waveform accuarately. It even has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87,"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n0xmz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}