Amateur Newbie Questions
 

Question 1)

I studied Electrical Engineering (20 years ago
now...lots of theory and little practice...) I
remember we had access to very expensive RF test gear,
amongst which was a Hewlett-Packard RF Spectrum
Analyzer (US$200,000 (!!!) I seem to remember). A
very, very nice piece of equipment. At that time the
IT revolution/DSP was still very much gathering steam.
Now that PCs with 3.4 GHz processors are available,
plus pretty sophisticated DSP development systems, at
a reasonable cost (several hundreds of dollars), is
there a good homebrew RF spectrum analyzer
available... I've seen plenty of AF spectrum
analyzers available (Spectran etc.) ... What I'm
after is something like:

low cost development board +
high end PC +
GNURadio (or whatever) +
Extensions to GNURadio
--------------------------------
= Pretty (or very) good RF spectrum analyzer

Question 2)

In a similar vein, though of course not as expensive,
Does anyone have circuit diagrams for a homebrewed
function generator, working against an accurate
internal reference, and putting out: pure sinusoids,
square waves, saw tooth functions, white noise ....
etc.

low cost development board (DAC??/Digitally Controlled
Oscillator) + Buffering and Amplification +
PC +
Homebrewed Software
--------------------------------
= Pretty (or very) good software controlled, test lab,
function generator...

Anybody got any ideas...sorry if the answers to these
questions are blindingly obvious!!!

Thanks

Tim

being more into science than engineering i can't addressyour questions
beyond saying the most use stuff I found on the generla are awas a arrl
book titledThe ARRL UHF/Microwave Experimenter's Manual, allowed me to
tranlate a lot of what I came to radio knowing into ham


Good luck

wrote:
Question 1)

I studied Electrical Engineering (20 years ago
now...lots of theory and little practice...) I
remember we had access to very expensive RF test gear,
amongst which was a Hewlett-Packard RF Spectrum
Analyzer (US$200,000 (!!!) I seem to remember). A
very, very nice piece of equipment. At that time the
IT revolution/DSP was still very much gathering steam.
Now that PCs with 3.4 GHz processors are available,
plus pretty sophisticated DSP development systems, at
a reasonable cost (several hundreds of dollars), is
there a good homebrew RF spectrum analyzer
available... I've seen plenty of AF spectrum
analyzers available (Spectran etc.) ... What I'm
after is something like:

low cost development board +
high end PC +
GNURadio (or whatever) +
Extensions to GNURadio
--------------------------------
= Pretty (or very) good RF spectrum analyzer

Question 2)

In a similar vein, though of course not as expensive,
Does anyone have circuit diagrams for a homebrewed
function generator, working against an accurate
internal reference, and putting out: pure sinusoids,
square waves, saw tooth functions, white noise ....
etc.

low cost development board (DAC??/Digitally Controlled
Oscillator) + Buffering and Amplification +
PC +
Homebrewed Software
--------------------------------
= Pretty (or very) good software controlled, test lab,
function generator...

Anybody got any ideas...sorry if the answers to these
questions are blindingly obvious!!!

Thanks

Tim

"an_old_friend" wrote


being more into science than engineering i can't addressyour questions
beyond saying the most use stuff I found on the generla are awas a arrl
book titledThe ARRL UHF/Microwave Experimenter's Manual, allowed me to
tranlate a lot of what I came to radio knowing into ham


Would somebody take this collection of words and pseudo-words over to sci.crypt
and see if they can parse it into human-readable language?

Thanks.

de Hans, K0HB

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:07:06 GMT, "KØHB"
wrote:

Would somebody take this collection of words and pseudo-words over to sci.crypt
and see if they can parse it into human-readable language?

It may also be that English is not that person's first language.

Tony

"Tony VE6MVP" wrote

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:07:06 GMT, "KØHB"
wrote:

Would somebody take this collection of words and pseudo-words over to
sci.crypt
and see if they can parse it into human-readable language?

It may also be that English is not that person's first language.

I didn't immediately recognize it as English. However, since the person who
wrote that gibberish claims to be a lifelong resident of the mid-west USA, I
think we can presume he was TRYING to communicate in English, but it would be
difficult to conclusively prove it from the evidence. Eh?

73, de Hans, K0HB

Tony VE6MVP wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:07:06 GMT, "K=D8HB"
wrote:

Would somebody take this collection of words and pseudo-words over to sc=
i=2Ecrypt
and see if they can parse it into human-readable language?

It may also be that English is not that person's first language.

well as it happens you are correct English is not my first language,
but more to the point I am rather dyslexic and the effectscome and go
in strentgh Hans knows this BTW and still decides to make fun of me
=20
Tony