Great introductory video. Looking forward to future videos on this subject.

This is what I'm waiting for.A lot of things about RF i learned from your videos.Thank a lot Sir.

I have the same SA and I picked some tips from this video. Thanks for your nuggets of wisdom!

Thanks! Great for people who just want to grasp basic differences between an oscilloscope and a frequency analyzer!

Excellent! This video is just what I was looking for as a newbie. Thnak-you!

Extremely helpful. Please keep up the good work.

Good learning session. Thanks.

Nicely done and a timely series now with more affordable spectrum analyzer options easily accessible. "Spectrum analyzers are strange." LOL! Yep, cool and strange at the same time. It's great that you call out these oddities.

you read my mind, i didnt want to ask u to do a stint on this, many thanx,

Superb video, many thanks - also for all other brilliant vids on your channel👍🏻This fundamentals helps me now better to understand my FFT function on my scope, even when it's might not really comparable with the performance of an analyzer (especially by using a R***l 1074Z 😉) P.S.: Like the manner of your vids and i'll certainly stay tuned - very educationally 🎯🏆👏🏻

Thanks for doing this video. I have the exact same SA but mine has the tracking gen also. As per your earlier video I was cued to check my internal lithium backup battery. Mine was original from January 1995 (date was written on the battery) and it still measured good! I changed it anyway and I did not loose the calibration values (the supercap did its job). I have not explored all the fine details on this SA so hope you will get into some of those in future videos.

thanks so much for making this vid

Awesome! Thanks!

Thank you very much for the Tutorial

The zero beat (0Hz tone) not only is not weird or fictitious but its existence is essential and the first clue that your SA is healthy (if you are looking at buying a used SA, not having a 0Hz tone is the first clue that the unit is defective). This is the leakage of the first LO at 2.1214GHz (in your particular SA, 8591E) through the first converter that passes through the second converter and appears as 0Hz after it is down-converted in two stages. That's why it is called LO feed-through. If you dont see it, the instrument's LO is defective. It exists in ALL swept frequency spectrum analyzers of any brand and any model, old or new.

Thank you a lot sir!

Well done!

I'm glad I saw this video. I just purchased the sencore SG 80. I'm looking for something to measure the RF output. Does the spectrum measure microvolts? I know there are RF power meters but the spectrum can do much more. I was just curios about the micrvolts(uV) After watching this video. I now have better understanding about spectrum analyzers. Thank you for your time.

I have a 8591EM without the built-in tracking generator, I also have a HP8444A w/o opt 059. ?? Is there a way to use tracking in another way that you know of. You are my HP vintage equipment go to. Before the 8444A your guidance was to use the generator from my Tiny SA and now I want to try this. I Habs tried sweeping a 6m low pass filter with my 8601A which worked pretty good. BTW all of my HP equipment that I have purchased was because of your videos, Thank you. (I'm a 76 year old experimenter and licensed ham that should have started 50+ years ago. Thank you for all you have taught me)

Peak search, next left or right 👍

Thank you

this particular SA already has a blocking capacitor at the input (47nF or 100nF, cannot remember exactly) it is rated at 25V but can handle more than that...so it's not that scary if you have some DC as long as it is not like 400V!

Hello there, could you please show us what kind of blocking capacitor you do use on your spectrum analyzer?

Thanks IMSAI Guy! I just acquired an HP 8557A in a 182T display. Right off the bat the only thing I know that is wrong with it is that it has no sweep. I have never used a spectrum analyzer before. Is this video applicable to analog sweep SAs like the 8557A? For example, will an analog sweep SA also display negative Hz peaks?

The data spectrum analyzers display would great for pdn analysis. But I'm not sure how (if) I would want to connect the input of a sa to a high current power plane. (Up to 400 amps in the specific case I'm working on)

Thanks bro that was really neat. So what’s a good price for that particular model? What if I were to be able to find one from a guy that is retiring or that’s gonna give me a pretty good deal on it versus what’s the every day price?

The terminology is "Y as a function of X" or "Y vs. X" as dictated by mathematical standards. You had it backwards. Below is correct. Oscilloscope: Amplitude as a fn. of time, or "Amplitude vs. Time" Spectrum Analyzer: Amplitude as a fn. of frequency, or "Amplitude vs. frequency"

I have the hp esa-1500A

How capable is the HP8921a SA functions compared to a dedicated unit like the 8591e ? Great channel, clear explanations, well presented. Vk5LTD

Can you make rf spectrum analyser using crt tunner and Arduino so everyone can touch SA

If I was on 146.520 and connected my spectrum analyzer what's the best or near best setting to see fm modulation

So the 8591e says 9KHz upwards but shows 0Hz. Does it actually go down to 0? Can you actually view, say, a 1KHz signal?

...is there a newer spectrum analyzer that has a comparable range to the HP 3585A?

The first thing to find out is the price. Is it affordable or is it a rip off? With excellent oscilloscopes selling for lesss than $400, an excellent spectrum analyzer should also be in that price range.

How can I get a copy of the data for the memory if the master doesn't exist, can it be downloaded, thank you

Hi there, I wanted to ask if it’s okay with you if I show some of these videos as part of my own twitch stream. I‘m getting my first analyzer soon and I think it would make an interesting stream to show my „first steps“ on the device, using your videos as a guide. So it would be watching/reacting to a part of your video and then trying it out myself. Many greetings!

that analyzer is an oldy but goody!

Being hopelessly OCD (look up anal retentive in the dictionary and you'll see my picture!) I always measure a device I'm about to test with a DMM to confirm there's no DC voltage present before hooking it up to my SA input.

Major questions is: why do they cost so much, excluding tinySA, they start from thousand dollars.

Hp really does make anything doesnt it

What is diffrence between analyzer and acoustic

...no tracking generator?!

you are nice

Great Channel. In the case of Looking at a 50 watt rf radio signal to see the harmonics, with the attenuated rf coming out of a bird sampler at -40 db, wouldn't any harmonics present also be attenuated -40 db? Possibly causing the harmonics to be lowered to the noise floor and be rendered not visible?

Way, way, way to expensive !!! Only stupid people will pay that much. Buy the tiny SA for $80.

Since this HP spectrum analyser shows signals that don’t exist for example at zero frequency, it cannot be trusted. I would never buy such an expensive and faulty piece of equipment. In fact, this item strikes me as a very poorly designed product.