Is "Brightness" only on the bigger models? I don't see "Brightness" on the TinySA Basic.
Brilliant device. I used to have an HP141T with all the band plugins and then replaced it with a Rigol (up to 1.5Ghz with TG version). I'm using the Basic as a "panadaptor" at 68.33 MHz on an FT-817ND just with a J310 FET buffer in the radio. I might get another for my FT910H. The spectrum is inverted, but you get used to that!
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Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
A GOOD PRACTICE:? Whenever I pick up the end of a coaxial cable, I always hold a finger across the end "shorting" the center conductor to the backshell before connecting it to anything.? Doesn't matter if the coax is connected to an outside antenna or laying on the bench.?
Most of the time I don't get any response.? But occasionally I get just a "bit" (***) of a surprise.? You just might get more of a surprise if the coax is connected to an outside antenna in a windstorm, rain, or snow!?? In either case, I've just saved the piece of equipment I was going to connect the coax to.
Dave - W?LEV?
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 11:04 AM, Adam Coate wrote:
Anyway, what can I do to discharge the voltage built up in my 3 foot SMA cable and HTOOL HT8 log periodic antenna? Grounding rod?
Short the SMA central pin with the outside of the SMA plug.
No ground needed.
--
Designer of the tinySA
For more info go to
|
Re: Hunting Spurious Emission at 154 MHz
Some years ago I helped chase down an interferer whose signal was drifting through the input frequency ranges of a bunch of 2-meter ham repeaters in our area.? It came and went, and when present had a particular pulsing pattern.
?
The local ARRL OO had managed to find its general location (to within a city block or two) but investigation of the usual suspects (TV-antenna amplifiers that might have started oscillating) hadn't found it.? I brought a spectrum analyzer and "tape measure" Yagi antenna to the party to help the direction-finding.
?
We were able to DF the signal to a small portion of an apartment complex.? We spoke politely to the local residents, and one guy near the apparent location offered to let us check his apartment.? The interference was strong, so we asked for permission to start turning off his computer gear.? Bingo!? When we unplugged the Ethernet switch, the noise completely went away.? Turn it back on, and the interference reappeared, with a pulsing pattern which exactly matched the flashing of the "traffic" lights on the switch.
?
My best guess is that the noise was a harmonic of the on-board crystal oscillator (which apparently wasn't all that stable) and that some failure of a filtering component in the switch was allowing the harmonic to leak out into the Ethernet and power wiring... "turning the whole house into a giant TV antenna" as the ads used to say.
?
I offered to trade the noisy Ethernet switch for a spare I had at home (one with more ports).? The owner agreed, we made the exchange, and the noise was gone for good.
?
Another common source for RF noise in these VHF frequency ranges, is a bad cable-TV setup somewhere.? Most cable-TV plants "re-use" over-the-air frequencies for on-cable channels.? If a cable system's wiring isn't "tight" (all segments properly shielded, and either fed to TVs or terminated in 75-ohm dummy loads) this RF can sneak out and radiate over-the-air, causing all sorts of interference.
?
?
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Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 11:04 AM, Adam Coate wrote:
Anyway, what can I do to discharge the voltage built up in my 3 foot SMA cable and HTOOL HT8 log periodic antenna? Grounding rod?
Short the SMA central pin with the outside of the SMA plug.
No ground needed.
--
Designer of the tinySA
For more info go to
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Add to this list people who routinely mix up "B" for bytes and "b" for bits, especially in the networking part of the computer world.
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Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Add to this list people who routinely mix up "B" for bytes and "b" for bits, especially in the networking part of the computer world.
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Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Dave, W0LEV, is correct. The metric prefixes are well-defined. See?
for a list of them. One of the ones that people screw up is milli (m) vs. mega (M). When mHz (or mhz) is typed instead of MHz, most of us can infer the correct prefix and unit. But in actual scientific and engineering work, accuracy in notation is very important, so we strive to use the correct notation. The difference between milli (m) and mega (M) is *nine* (10E9) orders of magnitude.
The unit abbreviation is also screwed up by many people. The unit "Hertz" is properly abbreviated as "Hz" and not "hz" and named after Heinrich Hertz, who was the first physicist to prove the existence of electromagnetic waves after Maxwell predicted them mathematically. We pay tribute to Hertz's pioneering work by capitalizing the abbreviation Hz. Other examples are J for Joule, W for Watt, O for Oersted, T for Telsa (the physicist, not the vehicle), V for volt, etc., etc., all named after the scientists who first discovered or identified the quantity in question. While many users of the tinysa are not engineers by vocation, they have to know or learn the technical principles involved with using spec ans and it behooves us (at least IMHO) to get the notation correct when communicating technical information.
There are other units the abbreviations for which people routinely mistype. The difference between "S" (Siemens) and "s" (seconds) comes to mind.
One of the basic techniques for solving mathematical equations in scientific work is to perform unit analysis as well as the mathematical calculation. Unit analysis involves ignoring the numbers and looking at the units to make sure that the units agree on both sides of the equation. If one starts with something such as "Volts/meter" on the LH side of the equation and unit analysis results in "meters/second" on the RH side of the calculation, one knows that one has miscalculated. Using the correct abbreviations for the units involved is key to accomplishing that effort.
The above is just my take on this stuff after working for 30+ years as an embedded systems design engineer in the IBM computer world of engineering. Worth 25 cents, taking into account inflation.
Hate to burst your bubble Dave, but the HP-3561A , in their
documentation, refers to the low frequency coverage (micro Hz) as
uHz, and how about kHz. So, yeah, mHz for "mili Hz" works for me
but hey I'm only a retired technician. BTW electron flow is from
(-) negative to (+) positive, but the engineers I worked with
called it "hole flow". ??? I guess they stand on an overhead
bridge and watch the spaces going the opposite way than the cars.
Clip from pdf of HP's 3561A:
Just sayin'
Mike C. Sand Mtn GA
On 5/16/2025 6:34 PM, W0LEV via
wrote:
Yea, Don, get the newbies to
use proper abbreviations!? I've called it out many times, but
it seems to fall on deaf ears and clearly never reaches the
gray matter.? What really gets my goat is "mhz".? What is
mhz?? MilliHertz?? Nothing the typical amateur deals with
delves into the milliHertz range!? Further the proper
abbreviation for Hertz is Hz, not hz!? Should I give up?
Dave - W?LEV
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at
5:49?PM Donald S Brant Jr via <dsbrantjr= [email protected]>
wrote:
On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 04:17 PM, sdegroff wrote:
All references when not given are 0db = 1w
My observation is that very few people use units of dbW even
when working at high power, dbm (relative to 1 milliwatt)
being far more common.?
If a colleague started using dBW I would ask them why as
I see no good reason for it, it is likely to cause
confusion.? Like 1000X level confusion.
?
In the RF world, if something is written as "xdB" it is
NOT a power level, it is a power ratio, or actually 10log of
that ratio.?
?
The TinySA power specs all use dBm AFAIK.
73, Don N2VGU
--
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Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Yes, I have one generator that goes to ?Hz.? But I'm not a typical ham by any means!? If you build yourself a seismometer, you're in the mHz region.
Dave - W?LEV
Hate to burst your bubble Dave, but the HP-3561A , in their
documentation, refers to the low frequency coverage (micro Hz) as
uHz, and how about kHz. So, yeah, mHz for "mili Hz" works for me
but hey I'm only a retired technician. BTW electron flow is from
(-) negative to (+) positive, but the engineers I worked with
called it "hole flow". ??? I guess they stand on an overhead
bridge and watch the spaces going the opposite way than the cars.
Clip from pdf of HP's 3561A:
Just sayin'
Mike C. Sand Mtn GA
On 5/16/2025 6:34 PM, W0LEV via
wrote:
Yea, Don, get the newbies to
use proper abbreviations!? I've called it out many times, but
it seems to fall on deaf ears and clearly never reaches the
gray matter.? What really gets my goat is "mhz".? What is
mhz?? MilliHertz?? Nothing the typical amateur deals with
delves into the milliHertz range!? Further the proper
abbreviation for Hertz is Hz, not hz!? Should I give up?
Dave - W?LEV
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at
5:49?PM Donald S Brant Jr via <dsbrantjr= [email protected]>
wrote:
On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 04:17 PM, sdegroff wrote:
All references when not given are 0db = 1w
My observation is that very few people use units of dbW even
when working at high power, dbm (relative to 1 milliwatt)
being far more common.?
If a colleague started using dBW I would ask them why as
I see no good reason for it, it is likely to cause
confusion.? Like 1000X level confusion.
?
In the RF world, if something is written as "xdB" it is
NOT a power level, it is a power ratio, or actually 10log of
that ratio.?
?
The TinySA power specs all use dBm AFAIK.
73, Don N2VGU
--
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Hate to burst your bubble Dave, but the HP-3561A , in their
documentation, refers to the low frequency coverage (micro Hz) as
uHz, and how about kHz. So, yeah, mHz for "mili Hz" works for me
but hey I'm only a retired technician. BTW electron flow is from
(-) negative to (+) positive, but the engineers I worked with
called it "hole flow". ??? I guess they stand on an overhead
bridge and watch the spaces going the opposite way than the cars.
Clip from pdf of HP's 3561A:
Just sayin'
Mike C. Sand Mtn GA
On 5/16/2025 6:34 PM, W0LEV via
groups.io wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Yea, Don, get the newbies to
use proper abbreviations!? I've called it out many times, but
it seems to fall on deaf ears and clearly never reaches the
gray matter.? What really gets my goat is "mhz".? What is
mhz?? MilliHertz?? Nothing the typical amateur deals with
delves into the milliHertz range!? Further the proper
abbreviation for Hertz is Hz, not hz!? Should I give up?
Dave - W?LEV
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at
5:49?PM Donald S Brant Jr via <dsbrantjr= [email protected]>
wrote:
On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 04:17 PM, sdegroff wrote:
All references when not given are 0db = 1w
My observation is that very few people use units of dbW even
when working at high power, dbm (relative to 1 milliwatt)
being far more common.?
If a colleague started using dBW I would ask them why as
I see no good reason for it, it is likely to cause
confusion.? Like 1000X level confusion.
?
In the RF world, if something is written as "xdB" it is
NOT a power level, it is a power ratio, or actually 10log of
that ratio.?
?
The TinySA power specs all use dBm AFAIK.
73, Don N2VGU
--
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Yea, Don, get the newbies to use proper abbreviations!? I've called it out many times, but it seems to fall on deaf ears and clearly never reaches the gray matter.? What really gets my goat is "mhz".? What is mhz?? MilliHertz?? Nothing the typical amateur deals with delves into the milliHertz range!? Further the proper abbreviation for Hertz is Hz, not hz!? Should I give up?
Dave - W?LEV
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 5:49?PM Donald S Brant Jr via <dsbrantjr= [email protected]> wrote: On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 04:17 PM, sdegroff wrote:
All references when not given are 0db = 1w
My observation is that very few people use units of dbW even when working at high power, dbm (relative to 1 milliwatt) being far more common.?
If a colleague started using dBW I would ask them why as I see no good reason for it, it is likely to cause confusion.? Like 1000X level confusion.
?
In the RF world, if something is written as "xdB" it is NOT a power level, it is a power ratio, or actually 10log of that ratio.?
?
The TinySA power specs all use dBm AFAIK.
73, Don N2VGU
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
One word. MOVE.
Mike C. Sand Mtn GA
PS Better yet, drop a #10 gauge wire straight out your window,
shove it into the ground (bare) then connect the other end,
'CAREFULLY', to your ground lug on the outlet but quickly
disconnect it if the building catches fire.
On 5/16/2025 2:04 PM, Adam Coate via
groups.io wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
I am very unfortunate in that my townhouse has both dirty
electricity and dirty ground in the outlets. I had been using
grounding mats/ sheets in my bed. After some testing I found out
that current was actually flowing through the ground plug and
into the grounding mat. Our townhouses were built in 1962 and
don't appear to have an electrode grounding system. They're
using the copper water pipes as the ground and so they're also
conducting stray voltage back into the house via the water
main.?
?
Anyway, what can I do to discharge the voltage built up in my
3 foot SMA cable and HTOOL HT8 log periodic antenna? Grounding
rod??
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
I am very unfortunate in that my townhouse has both dirty electricity and dirty ground in the outlets. I had been using grounding mats/ sheets in my bed. After some testing I found out that current was actually flowing through the ground plug and into the grounding mat. Our townhouses were built in 1962 and don't appear to have an electrode grounding system. They're using the copper water pipes as the ground and so they're also conducting stray voltage back into the house via the water main.?
?
Anyway, what can I do to discharge the voltage built up in my 3 foot SMA cable and HTOOL HT8 log periodic antenna? Grounding rod??
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
I can attest to that for sure (discharging cables). As a lead
tech, working for uncle sugar many years ago at NNSY (Norfolk
Naval Shipyard), I was assigned to re hook-up a long wire antenna
on top of bldg. 510 on a very dry day. I instructed my assistant
NOT to touch the down-lead of the antenna but to short it to
GROUND first. I then turned to another task only to hear lots of
'expletives' filling the air. Turning back to my assistant I asked
what happened only to see him throw the down-lead away from
himself.
I then 'snarkily' asked him if he had touched the down-lead to
which he replied, "yes." I then answered his puzzled look by
pointing to the 'long-wire' above and informing him of a slight
breeze for the 'discomfort' he had experienced. I believe he
learned a very valuable lesson without being seriously hurt
(except for his pride). End of conversation.
Mike C. Sand Mtn GA
On 5/16/2025 1:22 PM, Donald S Brant Jr
via groups.io wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
One of the best things you can do to prevent ESD failures is
to develop a habit of discharging any cable before you mate it
with any kind of equipment.? Cables can acquire a many-thousand
volts charge by bending, handling or unrolling them, as well as
by being attached to an ungrounded antenna, and hold it for a
surprisingly long time.??
Simply shorting inner and outer conductors with the outer
conductor of the mating connector is sufficient and will go a
long way towards protecting your equipment.? Get into the habit
of doing this EVERY time.
73, Don N2VGU
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 04:17 PM, sdegroff wrote:
All references when not given are 0db = 1w
My observation is that very few people use units of dbW even when working at high power, dbm (relative to 1 milliwatt) being far more common.?
If a colleague started using dBW I would ask them why as I see no good reason for it, it is likely to cause confusion.? Like 1000X level confusion.
?
In the RF world, if something is written as "xdB" it is NOT a power level, it is a power ratio, or actually 10log of that ratio.?
?
The TinySA power specs all use dBm AFAIK.
73, Don N2VGU
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
One of the best things you can do to prevent ESD failures is to develop a habit of discharging any cable before you mate it with any kind of equipment.? Cables can acquire a many-thousand volts charge by bending, handling or unrolling them, as well as by being attached to an ungrounded antenna, and hold it for a surprisingly long time.??
Simply shorting inner and outer conductors with the outer conductor of the mating connector is sufficient and will go a long way towards protecting your equipment.? Get into the habit of doing this EVERY time.
73, Don N2VGU
|
Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Unless an input or output is marked, as happens with some very high-power attenuators, I assume they are bidirectional.? They are generally Pi or T topology and thus symmetrical.
A notable exception, which are also clearly marked and may have mismatched connectors (commonly SMA on the 50 ¦¸ end and type F on the other), are 50¦¸ to 75¦¸ minimum loss pads, which have an L topology and are definitely asymmetrical.
73, Don N2VGU
?
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Re: True frequency band upper limit detection level of TinySA Ultra ZS-407 and corresponding signal dropoff
Agree, but not everybody has such a sensor
--
Designer of the tinySA
For more info go to
|
Re: True frequency band upper limit detection level of TinySA Ultra ZS-407 and corresponding signal dropoff
On Thu, May 15, 2025 at 10:03 AM, Erik Kaashoek wrote:
Doing a full band scan (zero to max frequency) will also work.
M preferred method of dealing with an unknown signal is by using a wideband power sensor and slowly approaching the mating connector with the unknown signal, I can sense a whopping signal by capacitive coupling before full engagement and adjust the external attenuation appropriately; sweeping a SA full band takes some time and might miss something important until it is too late.
Best regards, Don Brant
|
Re: Hunting Spurious Emission at 154 MHz
No special settings. Center the sweep frequency in the center of the QRM with minimum span to cover the unwanted signal. RBW should be on auto. Narrow the span tightly on one spike if the signal is complex and broad. Enable waterfall to more easily see signal strength changes. Make sure LNA is off and possibly add attenuation if needed as you near the source.
?
Holding the SA close to your stomach while doing a slow 360 turn should give you a null or dip when the source is behind you depending on frequency.
?
Good luck hunting!
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Re: What accessories do I need for a TinySA Ultra?
Bruce Akhusrst, Roger Hartel:
?
Thank you.
Of course they came from AliExpress. Anyway, they are working and I can use them for my humble needs.
Neither the seller (except one!) nor the manufacturer's website datasheets stated that the male plug end is the input for the 10 watt attenuator.?
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Mike EI9FEB
Mike C.
Donald S Brant Jr