Reply To: BB60 for EMC

Hey Jared!

Good point about peak and average – not so hard to do and nothing new to be developed for that..

Well.. I ummed and ahhed, and went for the lowest expense buy available to me, so now I have a BB60A (2nd hand, ebay… a bit less money than a new SA44 is over here, and about 1/4 the price of the new bb60c… I’m excited to play with the RTSA capabilities, and, well.. when I eventually feel the need to upgrade to a nice flat noisefloor and reduced spurious and better specs, I’m hoping this rumoured 20G unit will be out) Unfortunately I can’t run it yet as my laptop has no USB3 ports.. (d’oh!) looking at getting an expresscard adapter ASAP to run it, but need to know about current draw… came back here to ask that, actually.

Those PCB antennas look like a lot of fun. I have been sort of wanting to start learning enough to design my own for a while, but like to tell myself that a lack of simulation software is holding me back… That said if I’d just started with making them to basic theory and tweaking and testing them a year and a half ago I’d probably have some decent understanding and experience by now! oh well..

I ended up getting tekbox near field probes like this but minus the wideband amp and the wooden box – now I kind of wish I’d got the amp and box too… http://www.tekbox.net/test-equipment/tbps01-emc-near-field-probes-tbwa2-wideband-amplifier They seem quite like the beehive ones. Recommended, if you are interested. Today they did a great job at showing where a local oscillator in a configurable radio was dropping out of operation. At some point I’m going to try making my own using RG405 rigid and compare response to these.

That diy TEM cell looks like it might be too much fun to pass up. You have to give us a report on it here once it’s up and running, and you’ve had a chance to use it.