[NLRS] Spectrum analyzers

[kboston6 at wi.rr.com]

John;

If you are serious about a full featured spectrum analyzer, check out the Rigol DSA815.  I bought one at Dayton last year, with the tracking generator, cost $1500.  Before you choke, this is a Chinese knock-off of an Agilent 4100 series portable analyzer, and has the 'big boy' features and look of a much pricier analyzer.  This guy blows all those inexpensive USB and laptop based offerings out of the water.  With the TG in side the analyzer, add a hybrid coupler, and you have a scalar network analyzer.  the 815 goes from 9 khz to 1.5 GHz, so is not for the true microwave guy, but for the ham needing to do work up thru 1296, you CANNOT beat the price/performance ratio of this guy.  Take it from one who has had access to all the good Agilent, HP and Rhode/Schwarz analyzers thru my career, this is one great buy.  VERY portable (altho not as handy as the battery operated FSH3 RS analyzer) and lightweight, this has all the 'pro' features, like RBWs in 1-3-10 sequence from 100 hz up to 5 MHz, three traces, nice tft display, preamp, ect.  You can add a TG like I did, and a QP detector/CISPR RBW add-on is another $600 bucks.  I have used this guy for a consulting gig, and it ROCKS.

Ken W9GA

---- tosca005 at umn.edu wrote: 
> 
> 
> I have been looking for an inexpensive but capable spectrum analyzer for RF 
> work (testing, repair, design, etc.). I found a few nice ones on eBay from 
> HP or Agilent, but they approached $1,000 with shipping. One that was 
> "only" about $800 shipped was limited to a maximum of 4 GHz, whereas the 
> more expensive units were rated to 22 GHz without the need for any external 
> mixers. (Of course, the REALLY nice units that operate up to 50 GHz were 
> selling for around $30,000, which is extremely far out of my league.)
> 
> I came across this unit which looks pretty interesting.
>    http://micro.arocholl.com/
> 
> It is called the RF-Explorer. It is a solid state, handheld unit (nice and 
> portable) but can be connected via USB to a computer for better display 
> than the native LCD screen, for extended data storage, plot captures, etc. 
> There is one model, the WSUB3G, which covers the range from 15 - 2700 MHz, 
> which is pretty nice. The designer is working on an adapter or plug-in 
> module that would cover 5760 MHz (actually, the 5 GHz WiFi spectrum 
> plus...), though there does not seem yet to be pressure on him to make a 
> model for 3456 MHz. But the existing model obviously is good for the 
> highest few HF bands, and the first seven VHF/UHF bands. This model is only 
> $269 from seeedstudio.com:
>    
> http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/rf-explorer-3g-combo-p-1266.html?cPath=174
> 
> One of the things that it lacks is a built-in sweep generator. He has some 
> single-band units that include the sweep generator, but the wideband models 
> omit them (for lack of space, I suspect, given the size of this little 
> gem). That would not be an issue for me, since I own a WaveTek 2002 sweep 
> generator that is good to 2500 MHz, so it is a good match for the 
> capabilities of this little spectrum analyzer.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with this unit, or see any serious pitfalls 
> that would likely make me regret investing the $269 in one of these?
> 
> Thanks in advance for looking at this with me. (I'm also posting this in 
> the hopes that if no one sees a "fatal flaw", that some others of you may 
> find the item to be of interest.)
> 
> 73 de W0JT/5
> John P. Toscano
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