Here’s something that in my primary job as an EMC Test Engineer gets a lot of use – a laboratory grade amplifier for performing the Immunity testing phase of an EMC suite. I figured it was about time to crack them open & have a look at what makes them
Time for some more RF component teardowns, here’s a very high quality Directional Coupler from HP, I believe this was part of a Vector Network Analyser at some stage. The main body appears to be made of Brass, but the entire unit looks like it’s Gold plated – the shine
A while back I found myself in the need of an adjustable RF attenuator capable of high-GHz operation. As luck would have it I had an old Spectrum analyser on the shelf at work, which we had retired quite some time ago. Spectrum analysers being quite capable test instruments, I
Continue readingTest Equipment Upcycling – Variable Attenuator Module
Recently I found the need to do some measurements on 75Ω CATV equipment, only having 50Ω test equipment to use. For this, matching networks exist to convert 50Ω to 75Ω, but they’re fairly simple, so building them was a viable option. Above is the very simple schematic to create the
There’s quite a nice desktop app for the new NanoVNA v2, NanoVNA-Qt. It’s released as an AppImage for Linux, but unfortunately there is no version to run on a Pi supplied. The version below is built to run on the latest version of Raspbian (as of writing this, 2020-05-27). Enjoy!
Since I inherited an old HP 8753C Network Analyser from work, I figured updating a few things to relatively modern standards would be good. The factory CRT, being 28 years old, is definitely getting a little tired, not to mention being slow to warm up. I read over on the
This enormous box is the S-Parameter Test Set from a HP 8753C 3GHz network analyser. This unit contains the required components to automate the testing process for items such as cables, antennas & RF networks. The main EUT test ports are APC-7mm type connectors – a very expensive genderless RF
Continue readingHP 85046A 3GHz S-Parameter Test Set Teardown