NR6CA's Test Lab

Reno, NV

I have spent quite a bit of time, and yes some money, equipping my lab with what I felt was appropriate equipment for microwave construction and testing. As you go higher in frequency it gets much harder to get by without test equipment appropriate for the frequencies of interest. My philosophy is also to have sufficient amounts of equipment to do the job as simply and easily as possible. For this and reasons of back up, I have gone with some duplicates. For example, I have a pair of frequency counters so that I not only have a back up unit, should one fail, but I have the ability to accurately measure two frequencies at the same time if I need to. I often use two power meters for a single project if I am measuring two different frequencies, or one very low power and a higher power level. This saves having to change the HP-84xx heads, wait for the second one to warm and stabilize and then calibrate it. I recently picked up the HP-438A so I tend to now use that one with two sensors attached. The 438A was found listed by a seller who reported it would display an error message when turned on. A Google search quickly told me all that the error message meant there was no sensor attached. The seller, and I guess most looking at it, figured the unit had a problem so I was the only bidder. Two microwave generators allow me to test, for example, a 10 GHz mixer and verify that is works and outputs a 144 MHz signal with both 10368 MHz and 10224 MHz into it. All of the power supplies allow plenty of flexibility in hooking up multiple pieces needing different voltages. The 550 MHz signal source is used to provide the IF input frequencies, generally 144 MHz. I am in good shape up through 50 GHz testing but beyond that, I don't have much in the way of test equipment. This leaves my 80 GHz testing ability limited to the sub harmonics only. Perhaps one day I will find a harmonic mixer that works at 80 GHz.

Lab equipment includes: