Mini-Lab Downstairs.

While I do have a mostly complete lab upstairs, it will be nice to do some home construction at the operating position downstairs, and have at least some test equipment there. This mostly for simple constructions and kit building.

Here is an overview of what I have for work downstairs, with a few ideas for improvements.

- Soldering iron and antistatic mats.

- 2 Multimeters (DMM).

- single channel portable oscilloscope (100MHz?, more like 30MHz, but OK)

- LCR-multimeter (not for very low L and C values, but a start, a better one is upstairs)

- Nano VNA (900MHz Fundamental wave generator up to 300MHz)

- Nano VNA (SAA2) (3Ghz)

- (Both Nano VNAs need to be tested with a simple diode multiplier for signal generation above 3GHz, e.g. 3.4, 5.7 and 10GHz)

- Tiny SA, low cost spectrum analyzer up to 960MHz, base scan about 300MHz. (The bigger/better one is upstairs, anyway).

- frequency counter, up to 1.3GHz. Under warm-up-test. Looks like it needs a bit of burn-in to age the OCXO crystal a bit more. It has moved 5Hz @ 10MHz for now, and seems fairly temperature stable at normally changing room temperatures, < +/- 1Hz. If better stability is needed, a GPSDO can be adapted (10MHz out to 1MHz in as counter reference frequency).

- a GPSDO, 10MHz and a distributor/extra OCXO. More power supply needed.

- (I should set up some more power supply downstairs for testing. I have an older one (up to 1A w/fold-back at over-current/short circuit) that needs to be tested. Output voltage should be 10 - 15V. Claimed max current 2.5A, but looks like insufficient cooling for that.)

- (For more test equipment a 12V (not 13.8) supply with several Ampere output should be available. Must be linear to avoid noise/ripple on the output.) (Also usable for the microwave converters/transverters.) Some equipment does not like the 13.8V, and should have just a 12V supply voltage.

- for now, a few battery cases with 3x 18650 Li-Ion cells (9.5 - 12.5V), and a few Ni-MH rechargeable sets are available. (4.8V, 7.2V, 9.6V available, a casing for 10 cells (12V) can be made.)

- Charging for Ni-MH cells set up.

- (Charging for Li-Ion cells needs to be set up.)

- I think I will need a more advanced linear power supply for the downstairs lab. (There is one upstairs) I should go see if I can find something suitable. Something with both voltage and current limiting. A simple SMPS or DC/DC converter with those functions may be sufficient for quick experiments. I think I can find one in my pile of modules - 12V input buck/boost converter with 3 - 24 (30) V out, with digital meters and settings ;).

- A small set of components for experimentation.

If you can think of further improvements please consider leaving a comment.

I do have more test equipment upstairs, and that will come into use for more elaborate testing and building. It does need some (a lot of) tidying there, though.