As you might guess from some of my posts, I’m starting to get more into building radio-related electronics. One of the tools that is quite useful for testing these circuits is an oscilloscope. A couple of years ago a friend found a couple of used scopes being disposed of and passed one on to me. It was a B&K Precision 2160, which weighed in at about 17 pounds and approximately 5″x13″x16″ in size. It was good for measuring signals up to about 60 MHz, and free is a good price, but I found that adjusting it was a finnicky process and it took up a lot of space on my workbench.

My birthday was this week, and my wife and sons decided to go in together on a replacement for it. I’d had a Siglent SDS-1102CML+ on my wish-list, and so they went with that. It is very similar to the scopes my younger son used in his Computer Engineering courses at university. It is about the same width and height as the B&K, but is nearly a foot shallower, freeing up a lot of space on the bench. Using an LCD screen rather than a CRT, it is more than nine pounds lighter as well. (My elder son says it passes the “pinky test.” He can pick it up by the handle using only his pinky finger.) It is good up to 100 MHz, and many of the settings are automatically ranging or easier to adjust.

After the initial probe calibration (one adjustment on one of the two included probes, the other was already calibrated) I was able to get readings from a signal generator I built over the winter (keep an eye out for a post about that project as well.) A pure sine wave looked beautiful, and I am looking forward to using this new tool (OK, kind of a toy for a geek like me as well) as I work on enhancements to my Mighty Mite and a radio receiver for which I’m working on plans.