Following on from the success of previous CARC member-participating events, such as the RF power meter, Morse key and receiver evenings it was decided to devote an evening to that great and trusty friend of scientists, electronics engineers and amateur radio enthusiasts, the oscilloscope.
This magical piece of equipment comes in many forms and guises, from simple low budget models costing less than £200 through to high-end top of the range laboratory models, which will set you back thousands. In between of course is a vast range of oscilloscopes to satisfy all types of requirements. These are prices for new equipment. Most amateurs make do with second hand scopes to meet their budget and typical applications.
So what does an oscilloscope actually do? Well, for a start it has a calibrated screen (graticule) or display, (older models used a CRT, modern ones are LCD or LED) on which you can measure frequency, time and shape of a waveform. If it has more than one channel, and four channels are quite common, it will measure a number of waveforms at the same time so that you can for example compare input and output waveforms to and from an amplifier. It is an extremely useful piece of test equipment for signal tracing and faultfinding.
The oscilloscope permits signal voltages to be viewed, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences in the vertical (y) axis plotted as a function of time or of some other voltage in the horizontal (x) axis. Whilst a scope displays voltage on its vertical axis, any other quantity that can be converted to a voltage can also be displayed. Some more advanced scopes are designed as a main frame with space to fit additional modules or sub-units such as RF and AF spectrum analyser.
The scopes on display on the club evening varied in age and specification and included products manufactured by Tektronix, Philips, Fluke, Gould Advance, Hameg, Hewlet Packard and not forgetting a very nice miniature scope designed some years ago for commercial manufacture by Adrian Wood G3VJM.
The evening was well attended, and with plenty of models on display for people to play with, (see photos below), plus some additional boxes such as function generators and signal generators to provide input voltages and waveforms.
John Longhurst G3VLH
Welcome to Ray M0RXJ and Janet 2E0JXR who stopped by for the evening
A nice Tektronics 465B
Adrian G3VJM with a scope that he designed as one of his first jobs as a young engineer
Richard G4ANN and Peter G3LEG checking out a nice storage scope
The Philips PM3240 - a popular scope in its day
Adding a spectrum analyzer to scope makes a useful piece of test equipment
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