[Amps] Advice on instruments for ham use

[bill weinel]

Pete Smith wrote:
> I'm interested in acquiring a used solid-state oscilloscope for ham 
> use.  I know this isn't the place to ask, but hope that people who hang 
> out here can point me to a ham radio homebrew or similar mailing list 
> where people would have good advice on which models, what to pay, etc.  
> There are skillions of Google results based on searching for the above 
> topics but nothing, so far, that looks like the right answer.

Hi Pete,

I'd recommend you look for a Tektronix 465M or a 465. Both are 100Mhz 
triggered sweep dual trace scopes, very common, and can be found at good 
prices. The 465 series also features an external trigger and a B'delayed 
trigger. These are handy for looking for signal timing / glitch issues. 
I have two 465Ms here, one I bought for $75 in working condition, the 
other I bought as a parts unit for $25 (It had a broken volts/div switch 
on one channel.) However, since it was such a nice unit I couldn't bring 
myself to junk it. So I repaired it and use it here in the shop as well.

As others have stated, I would go for a good quality analog scope over a 
  digital scope. Digital scopess tend to be harder to fix. Also I don't 
think digital scopes provide as good a picture of whats happening in an 
analog signal as an analog scope does. This is due to the 
sampling/averaging nature of the digital scope. So unless you can afford 
to purchase one with a very high sampling rate, I would go for a good 
quality analog scope.

73 Bill W4WHW