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I am not overly a fan of Hacking Test Equipment, unless:
This is the cheapest Spectrum Analyser that I presently own, and I have owned this since I purchased it in 2014 from the Friedrichshafen Ham Show that I went to in Germany, also it has only been used for less than 30 minutes since I have owned it so it’s not even run in and actually unless I need something portable, it does not really get used much at all.
This is basically for one use only – Antenna Making / Tuning and as I have not actually been doing much of that at all due to the ‘Flood’ that took out nearly all of my Amateur Radio equipment which I have not even thought about trying to replace yet, so this poor old piece of kit has not really been used at all since it was purchased, in fact I would go so far as to say that I should have bought something better with the money but hindsight is a good thing…
Place the unit ‘Face Down’ on something that will protect the screen from damage, if like me you are just using the Anti-Static matting, then make sure you have brushed it off first to remove all the parts of dropped solder and dead carcasses of left-over radio bits that were left on the mat to slowly get lost in the decades of time that go by.
Next we have to remove the Nuts and Shakeproof Washers from each of the three BNC Connections, I found these were a little tricky, having just started using the new workshop I am missing some of the more useful tools, and in this case I could have done with some Deep Sockets, but I managed to find a suitable sized Spanner and just move each of the nuts a small amount to allow me to remove them with my fingers, the centre one was a little more of a pain, but after a while I managed to just shift it enough to loosen it off enough for fingers to remove.
Now we can afford to be a little more aggressive. Taking a suitable ‘Spludger’, and that by the way is the name for any tool that is useful to separate two parts of a device that has been either stuck together or just have a tight fit, I have collected of many suitable ‘Spludger’s’ over the years so finding something useful would not take too long.
I am now retired and living on the Isle of Man, my background is as varied as it gets, ranging from Information Technology to Graphic Designer and 3D VFX Artist, using and teaching Autodesk Maya, Softimage, and Smoke, one of more enjoyable positions. Since Moving to the Isle of Man I try to keep myself to myself and work on the house, I don't do much with regards to Amateur Radio or Electronics anymore, but I am still interested in the hobby and may well get back into it one day....