[Elecraft] Oscilloscopes

[Alan Bloom]

On Thu, 2009-05-21 at 10:20 +0200, Jon Kåre Hellan wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm thinking about buying a scope. I've seen many people recommend 
> getting an old analog scope, but they're big! I borrowed a compact 100 
> MHz digital scope from work, and it was nice. 50 MHz scopes are a lot 
> cheaper, though.
> 
> Will I regret getting a 50 MHz scope instead of a 100 MHz one?
> 
> 73
> Jon LA4RT

Of course, it depends on what you plan to use the scope for.  For
troubleshooting high-speed digital circuits you want the widest
bandwidth possible.  Overshoot and ringing on a bus line might be hard
to see with a 100 MHz scope and impossible with a 50 MHz scope.

On the other hand, the frequency response doesn't drop off a cliff right
at the specified bandwidth.  For example, my 100 MHz scope works just
fine for looking at narrow-band signals in the two meter band.  The
response is down a couple dB but for narrow-band signals that's not a
problem.

It's an HP54600A digital scope, but I doubt an analog scope would be
much different in this respect.  A graph of the frequency response
(measured with an HP8656B signal generator) is posted here:
http://www.cds1.net/~n1al/ham/54600.GIF

As you can see, this "100 MHz" scope is usable up through at least the
220 MHz band (at -7 dB).

Al N1AL