I gave the new "budget" signal generator from amazon a shot because it said it did modulation (both internally and from an external source) and I have a few thoughts just minutes out of the box. First one from the originating company's website (which I didn't notice until now). It turns out they actually got the branding right on one of their products! Don't believe me, check out their China website and watch the scrolling pics! I didn't photoshop that, they actually misbranded one of their products with the name "Junk"! Either they cannot spell their own company name, or one of their workers decided to leak the truth on their products and nobody noticed!
I havent even had a chance to put it on the scope before finding issues either. With the outputs OFF, putting the unit on the desired frequency will generate so much noise (on that frequency) that your radio will pick up the white noise with nothing connected to the output of the generator. Not a good start. This is the 60MHz-a unit, which uses the JDS 8060 firmware. I also have a "koolertron" generator (without modulation and based on JDS-2900) that made absolutely no RF noise with the outputs off suggesting their level of give-a-shit is on the decline. The only issue I ever had with the 2900 model was frequency accuracy and a slow drift. This one is just noisy!
From my experience with the JDS-2900 model, I expect that the "1mV" setting at 11m will be around -60dBm into a 50Ω load. But with that noise on this new one, using this with an attenuator for receive alignments (sinad measurements) might be tricky (hopeless). I will report more when I use it and know more.
Edit: And the Sync in and out on the back (whatever that is for, I assumed reference oscillator) have their BNC ports so far into the case that a standard BNC connector sleeve is not able to grab the connector "ears" (whatever you call those) and tighten down. You can't even get it started and partially turned. Must be why they left that feature out of the list even though its in the pics.
I havent even had a chance to put it on the scope before finding issues either. With the outputs OFF, putting the unit on the desired frequency will generate so much noise (on that frequency) that your radio will pick up the white noise with nothing connected to the output of the generator. Not a good start. This is the 60MHz-a unit, which uses the JDS 8060 firmware. I also have a "koolertron" generator (without modulation and based on JDS-2900) that made absolutely no RF noise with the outputs off suggesting their level of give-a-shit is on the decline. The only issue I ever had with the 2900 model was frequency accuracy and a slow drift. This one is just noisy!
From my experience with the JDS-2900 model, I expect that the "1mV" setting at 11m will be around -60dBm into a 50Ω load. But with that noise on this new one, using this with an attenuator for receive alignments (sinad measurements) might be tricky (hopeless). I will report more when I use it and know more.
Edit: And the Sync in and out on the back (whatever that is for, I assumed reference oscillator) have their BNC ports so far into the case that a standard BNC connector sleeve is not able to grab the connector "ears" (whatever you call those) and tighten down. You can't even get it started and partially turned. Must be why they left that feature out of the list even though its in the pics.
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