M6DBL
05-17-2012, 07:05 AM
Hi All,
I wonder can some body give me some guidance regarding buying a new osilloscope. I have a perfectly good and fully working old fashioned analogue oscilloscope. However it's not really up to amateur radio work, the main reason being that it's bandwidth is limited to about 25Mhz. Looking on the internet I can see many modern digital osilloscopes that have a bandwidth of between 100 and 200 MHz, and are very competitivly . These are a far different item to the sort of oscilloscope I have been used to, so I have some questions that I hope you good people can help me with.
One of the things I notice on modern oscilloscopes is that they can perform certain math functions. I am quite used the old fashioned scopes where you can add or subtract one vertical channel from another. However almost all these modern digital scopes have the ability to do FFT (Fast Fourier Transforms). This is area I most want help with. My question is, that while I realise the ability to do FFT's does not make it the same as a proper spectrum analyser, but it does allow you to display frequency on the X axis against amplitude on the Y axis. So, would a modern DSO that can perfom FFT's be suitable for looking at the output of an HF transceiver to check for unwanted harmonics and spurious. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
73
Dave
M6DBL
I wonder can some body give me some guidance regarding buying a new osilloscope. I have a perfectly good and fully working old fashioned analogue oscilloscope. However it's not really up to amateur radio work, the main reason being that it's bandwidth is limited to about 25Mhz. Looking on the internet I can see many modern digital osilloscopes that have a bandwidth of between 100 and 200 MHz, and are very competitivly . These are a far different item to the sort of oscilloscope I have been used to, so I have some questions that I hope you good people can help me with.
One of the things I notice on modern oscilloscopes is that they can perform certain math functions. I am quite used the old fashioned scopes where you can add or subtract one vertical channel from another. However almost all these modern digital scopes have the ability to do FFT (Fast Fourier Transforms). This is area I most want help with. My question is, that while I realise the ability to do FFT's does not make it the same as a proper spectrum analyser, but it does allow you to display frequency on the X axis against amplitude on the Y axis. So, would a modern DSO that can perfom FFT's be suitable for looking at the output of an HF transceiver to check for unwanted harmonics and spurious. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
73
Dave
M6DBL
