[Premium-Rx] Sort of a Premium RX Question...about the R&S ESMI receiver/spectrum analyzer

[spencer]

Greeting RX fans!

I am curious if any of you may have had any experience operating a Rohde & Schwarz ESMI receiver/spectrum analyzer? These have a very wide frequency range and preselection so have caught my attention. If you have any experience to share, I have a few questions:

Overall, realizing that it's a bit of a hybrid, how does it work as a receiver? I would guess there is no squelch function for use on AM or FM for monitoring. Is this correct?

I cannot quite tell from the information I have if it is limited to the IF bandwidths used for EMI work or if it has a wider range of bandwidths in the receiver mode (in perhaps what they refer to as the "overview" mode).

It appears that it's upper bandwidth limit is 1 MHz so not optimal for looking at wideband microwave or satellite signals. With a 10 MHz wide 21.4 MHz IF output, you would still have challenges looking at most modern microwave point to point circuits or any satellite transponder, so even as a microwave downconverter, these seem to have limited utility. Any thoughts on how it might perform with modern wideband signals? Of course, some of these issues are why HP came out with their wideband microwave receiver based on the 70000 series spectrum analyzer...

The one example I have seen of these in person had an odd front panel connector that was adapted to an N connector. The tracking generator output was lacking the adaptor and only had the strange connector. I saw mention on eBay of a 'planar crown' adaptor allowing use of various types of RF connector. Is the 'strange connector' a planar crown connector? If not, are these adapters available or are they effectively 'unobtainium'?

How reliable are these units? The seem quite complex and are now pretty old.

Lastly, while I found a specification sheet or two on the inter web, I have not found a PDF of the manuals for this receiver on line. If anyone has a manual as a PDF, I suspect it might answer a few of these questions.

Thanks in advance for any observations you might be able to share!

I also wanted to say thanks to the folks that sent much useful information on the current Cubic HF and VHF/UHF receivers. It was all very useful!

-Spencer Bahner K7SLB