TSP #80 - Teardown, Repair & Experiments of an Agilent E7495B 2.7GHz Base Station Test Set

[@cullenwilliams2911]

Great video, thanks so much for your time, KZbin is lucky to have a content producer like you. I've learned so much from your videos.

[@PapasDino]

As if there was ever any doubt he'd not be able to put it back together again! ;-)

[@Thesignalpath]

+Dino Papas I appreciate your confidence in me. :)

[@TheRadioShop]

+Dino Papas Yep, I laughed so hard when I heard that Dino. Shahriar is starting to be a comedian :)

[@m4dizzle]

@@TheRadioShop "...and here we have it all back in place...." lol, Shahriar is the best

[@gamccoy]

The repair Gods have been kind to you, recently.

[@ChipGuy]

You mentioned a few times "Sorry that I have to rush through it..." I don't think that you rushed through it too fast. You just kept it to the very important bits this time. I like that, nothing wrong about it. And of course you are able to put it together again, I'd never had any doubt about that ;)

[@JustinAlexanderBell]

Another video so soon, excellent.

[@Pieh0]

If you can't find one of these, have a look for the CMU200, they're also a nice bit of kit. It's meant to be rack mounted, but it's fine sat on a shelf.

[@TMS5100]

i have both e7495a and cmu200. e7495a has much better UI but cmu200 has superior performance. but e7495a can be had for unbelievably low prices.

[@nftmaster2050]

Shahriar, i love to watch your videos for some time past and am thinking about getting started with RF for quite some time now. So especially this episode gives great pleasure to me, because it covers relatively low cost equipment as a starting point. I'm wondering if you are planning to do more of this in addition to the interesting costly equipment? If yes, i would love to see a video about the Rohde&Schwarz CMU200 which is similar to the unit in this video but with a more suitable formfactor for a lab. Greetings from Germany

[@juliantopolski4601]

I have an E7495A, the break in the noise floor is because they have a preamp that is only active from 380 Mhz to 2.7 GHz. Looks like it gives about 30 dB of gain and the VNA feature will only work from 380 MHz to 2.7 GHz.

[@TheRadioShop]

I have been looking something to do repeater duplexer tuning. The Rigol spectrum with tracking generator is about 14 hundred bucks. Just saw one of these for 17 hundred on ebay. Wish I could find them cheap.Great repair. loved it. Don't worry about doing it fast. We understand. Thanks Shahriar

[@JessieAMorris]

There's a few on eBay for ~$300 right now. Get em' while they're hot.

[@Pieh0]

9:57 "Looks pretty straightforward" Said while drowning in ribbon cables :P

[@stevefoudray487]

I would like to see if it’s possible to take advantage of the GPSDO to provide 10MHz output for my other instruments. I have a Kramer Component Video distribution unit converted 50ohms for this purpose.

[@jovianconflict5366]

Man, I wish I could get one of these. Where I live there is very little used equipment (and none at reasonable prices - even broken instruments). Plus, my uni doesn't even have a spectrum analyzer, so it's pretty hard to do RF stuff, but I manage haha.

[@firemystix]

where do you source all these broken test equipment you're fixing? great video again anyway

[@Arek_R.]

Cant believe! He just replaced capacitor and it works like new one! When I want to repair something, everything is not working etc >.

[@JGunlimited]

What are spectrum analyzers used for? I.e. why would someone have one in their home lab?

[@PlasmaHH]

I need one of these for "next to nothing" too.. however, I wonder if we have different ideas of that term...

[@Thesignalpath]

+Dennis Lubert I paid $150 including shipping.

[@PlasmaHH]

+The Signal Path Blog If the listing lets one deduce that the reason it is broken is likely something not too severe, then that is indeed an amazing price. (I think I found the ebay listing, the scratch marks on the battery match). Around here you would have to pay 500-800 USD for the same thing :(

[@vaualbus]

+The Signal Path Blog This instrument is like the gsm/pcs test set I got on ebay for 65 bucks. It have a lot of stuff in spectrum analyzer, signal generator, frequency counter, power meter, audio analyzer, modulation analyzer, ecc. It is the hp 8922M. It has also a lot and I said a lot of boards inside!

[@Starchface]

+Dennis Lubert I see one of these that has been refurbished, which could mean a lot of things. Price, around $9,000. At first I thought it was _this_ unit, but the options are different.

[@PlasmaHH]

pillsnotbills Look for the battery scratch marks ;)

[@netman69]

If I took that apart, I'd put a sticker or sharpie mark on every flat cable and take a gazillion photos to help me put it back together.

[@Aleuli73]

I bought one from ebay some time ago. The repair was exactly the same.

[@hightechstuff2]

Just bought one on fleabay. I'd love to end up with a working SA to learn from. Wish me luck!

[@niklaswallin9478]

Thoose capacitors tend to do just that sometimes, might be that they need extra headroom in voltage..

[@ttkoh123]

I propose Shahriar to endorse his signature on all the equipment he touches and put those on auction. I am willing to pay a few hundred dollars more... :-)

[@MegaArtan1]

Can Anyone Tell Me if Agile E7495A has the Option to Measure the SWR Antenna for the HAM Radios ???. Thank You ,..

[@purevdorjdash4343]

yes

[@OneBiOzZ]

WOW what an insane bit of kit! i would kill to get one of these but i can't imagine i can get it for anything less than $10k

[@fabiopinciroli4962]

Why such a short video???😢

[@Starchface]

It's crazy that people are giving instruments like this away. Anyone who has a use for these should be able to repair them, saving many thousands of dollars for a few hours of work. I can only think they are throwing them in the dumpster as soon as there's a scratch. This was a trivial repair that needed no skills but soldering. No excuse! I guess it's lucky for us though.

[@shana_dmr]

Few hours of work when technician isn't actually doing job he was hired for, unknown success rate, getting cal of this instrument void so it has to be sent for not cheap calibration & recertification process and not being sure if this instrument won't crap again in next few weeks, because tech didn't found the real reason for failure.So as soon as this instrument is out of warranty and it breaks, it gets tossed into dumpster. And that's a field use device, so it will get reasonable physical abuse. Sad, bud reasonable.

[@TMS5100]

i got a working e7495a off ebay recently for ~$500. msrp was somewhere around $9000 when new.

[@grantfullen9559]

Great video.

[@DavidMG99]

👍👍

[@douro20]

I think this unit may had been designed in a hurry using an off-the-shelf MIPS CPU board and modules which already existed in their portfolio.

[@sapientsatellite]

Ninja cat appears @0:20

[@hannonm]

What A beast!!!!

[@M0UAW_IO83]

And yetanother piece of test gear to look out for faulty. I wish I could find this stuff so cheaply...

[@TMS5100]

elevated noise floor at 375mhz is due to preamp design. community.keysight.com/message/59265

[@jaa93997]

a 0.0001 cent component trolling a multi thousand dollar piece of equipment.... dammit

[@txtrader512]

need to invest in some fingernail polish for those cable situations

[@grumss9248]

What a frustrating instrument, too many things in one device and doesnt seem to be able to output above -23dbm! Too bad if one wanted to inject a signal into a typical 10dbm LO mixer! not for me!

[@grumss9248]

seems it does everything but isnt great for anything?

[@Thesignalpath]

Kind of...

[@TKomoski]

You can't get that 4 200

[@Thesignalpath]

+T Komoski I paid $150 for this one. But you are right, you have to be patience and something will come up.

[@TKomoski]

+The Signal Path Blog What ever it cost DON'T Vote Trump

[@Thesignalpath]

+T Komoski Haha, OK, but I can't even vote!

[@BillyBob-ik4pn]

First