Kerry D. Wong

In the area where I live, the cell phone reception is spotty at the best. Even though I am only a couple of miles from a nearest tower, I barely get any cell signal at all let along usable 4G coverage. Since nowadays everyone is working from home, I thought it would be a good investment for a cell signal booster so that in the event I loose my network connection I can continue working tethered to my phone.

The latest addition to my lab equipment is a Keithley 230 programmable voltage source which can output up to ±100V. Unlike many of the power supplies and voltage sources I have, the Keithley 230 is capable of operating in all four quadrants, meaning it can both source and sink current in either of the output polarities. Although the current capability is limited to ±100mA.

I picked up a Marconi 2305 modulation meter off eBay the other day. As the name indicated, a modulation meter is used to measure the modulation characteristics of a source signal. The Marconi 2305 is capable of measuring amplitude/frequency and phase modulated signals from a few hundred kHz all the way up to 2 GHz.

I have made many electronic loads in the past. For instance this simple harddrive cooler housed small dummy load, this more sophisticated constant current/constant programmable load and this heavy-duty electronic load that is capable of sinking over 1kW under peak load. In this blog post though, I am going to take a look inside an Array 3711A DC electronic load I recently purchased on eBay. You can find a video of this teardown towards the end of the post. Continue reading ‘Teardown of an Array 3711A 300W DC Electronic Load’ »

A couple of weeks ago, I got myself an Agilent U1731B LCR meter on eBay. These handheld LCR meters are quite expensive when new, but can be found on eBay for a fraction of the original price. Dave Jones at the EEVBlog did a teardown video on a better spec’d U1733C (and U1733B) meter a few years ago, I suspect that circuit-wise the U1731B would be quite similar to what’s inside of a U1733B. Continue reading ‘Agilent U1731B LCR Meter Teardown’ »

Have you ever wondered what is inside of a 15 year old commercial color projector? Well we will find out in this post today. As usual, a video of this teardown is included towards the end of the post. Continue reading ‘Extreme Teardown of a Panasonic PT-L780U 3LCD Projector’ »

I did a teardown a while ago on a cheap eBay electromagnetic radiation detector, and if you recall the performance of that meter was mediocre at the best. This time around though, I’ve got a MEDA PLM-100 AC magnetometer. Since MEDA (Macintyre Electronic Design Associates) specializes in fluxgate and search coil magnetometers, this PLM-100 magnetometer is a piece of professional test equipment. In this blog post, you will see some teardown pictures and for those who want to see some real world actions you can take a look at the video included towards the end. Continue reading ‘Teardown of an MEDA PLM-100 AC Magnetometer’ »

IRIG time code generators (not to be confused with the ones used in video and film industry) are often used for clock synchronization among various connected equipment and is commonly used in power generation and distribution industry as well as in the military. In this blog post we will take a look inside a Datum 9300 time code generator from the late 80’s. A video detailing the teardown is linked towards the end of the post. Continue reading ‘Inside a Datum 9300 Time Code Generator’ »

There are a lot of cheap electromagnetic radiation testers out there which boast some quite impressive claims. So I decided to pick up a popular one (GM3120) from eBay to see how well it works. And perhaps more importantly, I wanted to take a look inside to see how the E field and H field sensing is done. Continue reading ‘Teardown of a GM3120 Electromagnetic Radiation Tester’ »

Although LED light bulbs have been around for a while, I have not been able to totally replace all my lights in the house to LED ones until quite recently. The main reason is that some of my existing light fixtures only take G16.5 style bulbs with E12 screws and higher wattage LED bulbs of this kind only became available until quite recently. Continue reading ‘Teardown of an EcoSmart 60W Dimmable G16.5 LED Bulb’ »

In my previous post, I did a teardown of an HP 8620C sweep generator along with an HP 86245A 5.9 GHz to 12.4 GHz RF plugin. A few of the plguin boards in the 8620C had leaked capacitors and also there seemed to be some sort of mechanical issue as no power was delivered to the transformer regardless of the power switch positions. So what I planed to do next was to restore the power to the unit and replace those bad capacitors and see if I could bring this sweep generator back to life. Continue reading ‘HP 8620C Sweep Generator Repaired’ »

I just picked up an HP 8620C sweep oscillator with an HP 86245A 5.9 GHz to 12.4 GHz RF plugin on eBay. This time around though, the unit does not work. While it was advertised as a working unit I could not get it powered on and there was no sign of life whatsoever. So before I start troubleshooting and repairing the unit, I thought I would do a quick teardown to see what’s inside and if I could spot anything obvious that was out of the ordinary. Continue reading ‘Capacitor Plague? Inside an HP 8620C Sweep Oscillator and HP 86245A RF Plugin’ »

I recently bought an HP 8671A microwave frequency synthesizer on eBay. This synthesizer can generate signals from 2GHz to 6.2GHz with an unleveled output of more than 8dBm. It is a nice complement to my HP 8642B signal generator and Wavetek 907 signal generator. Using these generators, I can now generate signals of pretty much any frequencies under the 12GHz range. A video of this teardown is linked towards the end of this post. Continue reading ‘Teardown of an HP 8671A Microwave Frequency Synthesizer’ »

My video on the teardown of an HP 493A traveling wave tube amplifier had generated quite a bit of interest. After I revealed that the electron gun portion of the tube was radioactive, a couple of my YouTube channel viewers had wondered if I could take the traveling wave tube further apart. So I did just that. Continue reading ‘Further Disassembly of the HP 493A TWT’ »

In my previous video featured on EEVBlog I did a teardown of an HP 493A microwave amplifier along with the traveling wave tube inside. I actually had done a teardown of an identical unit a while ago but this time I managed to take a peek at the traveling wave tube inside. Continue reading ‘The Traveling Wave Tube inside HP 493A is Radioactive’ »