[Boatanchors] Hand held and Not Hand Held frequency counters?

[jcoward5452 at aol.com]

I think for field use the Optoelectronics units are quite useful and are probably good enough for use on a Ham's bench as well.
For those that can afford them the EIP Microwave frequency and pulse counters appear on the auction place often.They are still serviceable and are supported by Phase Matrix Inc. who makes the same and other counters as EIP did.PMI also makes the counters for Agilent but those are out of reach pricewise for most of us.Most of the EIP and PMI counters have red led displays.The Agilent counters have back lit lcd displays. The Agilent  and the similar PMI counters do have a battery option available for portable operation.
Jay



-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Clarke <brianclarke01 at optusnet.com.au>
To: jbeide at charter.net; Boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
Sent: Thu, Dec 31, 2009 8:06 pm
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Hand held frequency counters?


I do recall when the Optoelectronics units first came out that they 
appeared' to be accurate. Crikey, with all those display digits, they must 
e accurate. Err, mustn't they? This was an argument I had many times with 
ech college students who had just acquired their 4.5 digit hand-held DMMs - 
hey had no idea what 'accuracy' meant. But really, all that Optoelectronics 
ounters had going for them was short-term reliability, ie, if you measured 
he same thing within a few seconds, you would get the a similar answer. 
ver the longer term, there was no such guarantee - which side had wandered 
r jittered the most - the signal you were measuring, or the reference 
nside the Optoelectronics device? 'Twere an interesting marketing exercise 
o substitute apparent resolution for non-apparent non-accuracy.
Think about this for a wee moment. Why do you think that all the better 
uality counters are fairly large, ie, not hand-held or pocketable? How do 
ou insulate a crystal from the variability of outside temperature? How do 
ou develop a front-end gate that presents a flat impedance and flat 
ensitivity over several decades of frequency? How do you develop ... Oh, I 
on't need to go on. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then don't 
omplain if I tell you that your carrier wanders or is not where you claim 
t to be.
Marketing is not to be confused with truth. Is Optoelectronics still in 
usiness? I could find no reference on the web.
Can I also suggest that cutting the long tails to email trains is to be 
dmired.
73 de Brian, VK2GCE. 

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