Category: Test Equipment

BK Precision 2005B signal generators are now discontinued in favour of the more modern digital counterparts. However, this doesn’t mean that these signal generators are no longer any use, quite the contrary.

In it’s day, this signal generator was re-branded and sold under many different names. In the UK, this was most probably best known under the Maplin brand.

The Bird 43 Wattmeter is a field-proven portable, insertion-type instrument designed to measure both forward and reflected RF power in transmission lines.

Manufactured by the Bird Electronic Corporation, originally designed many years ago, this particular instrument is still highly regarded and in use today. A couple of reasons for this are that the Bird 43 has a full-scale accuracy of ±5%, and the wide range of plug in elements, often called slugs, covers an extensive range of frequencies and power levels making it suitable for a huge range of applications.

A resistance decade box, sometimes called a resistance substitution box is used mainly for creating a known temporary resistance in an electronic circuit.

A decade box is nothing more than a series of precision, or if you prefer, extremely close tolerance resistors connected by switches in such a way that it is possible to select the resistance value you require.

The Rockseed RS305P programmable power supply is a single-output high-precision DC supply, microprocessor controlled with LED display of voltage, current and power at the same time.

Every electronics workbench should have at least a couple of power supplies available especially when testing out equipment. My radio equipment is run from a 50amp power supply, and I have a second 45amp supply for bench testing. I also use a Rockseed RS305P bench supply when working on equipment or projects where I need to limit either the voltage or current.

The MSA-4901 is a spectrum analyser designed to cover the 1 to 300MHz range. The oscilloscope is a time domain type in which the frequency domain and vertical axis are calibrated in logarithmic form.

Although this unit is not as complex as high-end laboratory grade instruments, it serves my purpose. It has to be mentioned that my Hantek DSO5102 digital oscilloscope has an FFT function which mathematically emulates a spectrum analyser.

The Schlumberger Solatron 7150plus is a compact bench/portable, mains-operated multimeter, similar to the popular HP/Agilent 34401A, which offers 5½ / 6½ digits resolution and an accuracy to 0.005%.

The meter is built in good quality 1980s technology using through-hole components on a motherboard, carrying power supply, processor, IEEE488 (HPIB, GPIB) interface and a display board, plus a galvanically isolated, separate analogue/floating logic board with its own processor controlling the A/D conversion and communicating serially with the base unit. The two boards are separated by an aluminium shield/chassis.