I'm assembling the following suite of test kit just to see what it can do for radio design work. After evaluating the performance relative to my mid 90's HP & Tek kit, I plan to use this kit to do various exercises such as design an amplifier, oscillator, filter, etc and measure the performance.
For most of my life my RF ambitions were stymied by the lack of access to test gear. So for me, the nanoVNA and tinySA are huge. I have decided to make a project of building out the most complete, lowest cost Field Day portable HF test bench I can come up with.
The objective is coverage up to 222 MHz with sufficient accuracy and resolution to make experimental design more tractable.
Hantek 2D42 (DSO-DMM-AWG)
3x tinySA (SA and 2x RF synthesizers)
nanoVNA
RFzero (GPSDO)
LCR/transistor tester (need USB unit)
DMMCheck Plus (DMM cal)
Bodnar's pulser w/ 1 MHz repetition rate (TDR)
diode noise source
2x step attenuators
2x RF bridges
2x wide range matching networks
dedicated netbook to control above
cables, adapters, cal kits, etc
battery powered lab PSU
The Hantek is a compromise chosen because it provided 3 functions, was small, cheap and with a claim of 40 MHz BW appears good enough to me. There are possibly better options at the same price point, but they are much larger which is not meet the Field Day portability constraint..
With some care in shopping, the above should be available for under $1000. Despite my grad student slave wages 30 years ago, I'd have bought all that for $1000 in a heartbeat. And $1000 then would be much more today. All I can say is "Wow!"
Don't just sit there, say something! I did *not* start this to hear myself. The wall already serves that function ;-)
Have Fun!
Reg
