'Dennis Tillman' dennis@... [TekScopes] wrote:
Hi Mike,
For many years I searched Ebay for a Huntron at a reasonable (<$200) price
since, I thought, I must be missing something important. Fortunately I never
found one at a price I could justify. Instead, completely by accident, I
came across one at a swap meet about a year ago for $20. I was very excited
until I put it through its paces (which to my disappointment only took a few
minutes). To paraphrase "It was a case of LESS than meets the eye".
I never had any doubt that a Huntron is the right tool for the right job and
for the right person. That person was not me. As far back as I can remember
I dreamed of owning a CALIBRATED scope like Tek and HP made not a Heathkit,
Eico, or an RCA since they were just fancy toys. Even as a boy I would not
have been impressed by owning a Huntron. It reminds me of when I longed for,
and finally convinced my parents to buy me, a Geniac. The joke was on me. It
was rubbish. I still cringe when I think of how I was conned into buying
that.
The Huntron is a go/no-go tool not a laboratory instrument. What amazes me
is that Huntron figured out they could sell them for >$1000. I could have
made millions a long time ago if I was that smart. Damn!
You can get a better curve trace in kit for for $20 on Ebay, rather than a bulky Go/NoGo tester.
It's like 35+ years ago I needed a good return loss bridge to troubleshoot MATV systems in schools. I built one in a Pomona box, and put a surplus Ch 3 modulator and batteries in another. Sadelco wanted $300 for theirs. This cost me under $20, and most of the money was spent on the diecast Pomona boxes. I took a 50 ohm design from the ARRL handbook, and redesigned it for 75 Ohm. The hardest part to find back then was 1% 75 ohm resistors. Now, I can get .1% or .01% for less than what I spent back then.
A decade later, I had a nice CATV bench where I worked, and my bridge was as accurate as the latest, that sold for over $1000. My unit fit into the storage slot in the Sadelco meter, and saved me weeks of work in schools with a lot of bad coax.
Michael A. Terrell