A glimpse into the psyche of an American electronics hobbyist - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: hydrogen maser
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 05:03:11 am
content: What I most appreciate about the eevblog forum are not the technical aspects of it, certainly those are very nice, but from a personal perspective what is most enjoyable to me is that there are people from all over the world who participate here. I very much appreciate your unique perspectives and insights and the nuances of how you think and communicate. In the hope that some of the non-US citizens of the forum might find it enlightening or interesting in some small way, I would like to share with you the thought processes involved in how a typical American engages in problem solving by illustrating a small problem that I had and how I solved that problem.The problem: I have two HP 5328A universal counters that I would like to make more accurate. These frequency counters are old and obsolete and of little monetary value but they have a clock input and it would be useful to me to supply them with a reasonably accurate external reference clock. An obvious choice would be an oven controlled crystal oscillator, this certainly would be adequate and appropriate for short-term frequency stability and it would be the best choice given the level of precision that I wish to achieve considering what the old HP counters are capable of, but an ovenized oscillator is a very boring and mundane solution. Something a little more interesting from a physics standpoint was called for to satisfy me, so a rubidium standard perhaps? I looked on ebay and other places and there were many rubidium based oscillators for sale at reasonable prices and I began the process of choosing the most appropriate one given all the factors of my particular situation but something about the idea of using a rubidium oscillator caused a feeling of unease in me. This sense of unease grew as I was evaluating the many offerings and then it hit me, I realized what a fool I had been! How could I have forgotten the first principle of problem solving for Americans? The first principle in solving any problem is: whenever possible always strive for massive, completely disproportionate, and unjustifiable by any measure of reason - overkill. Now I felt at ease because the correct solution to the problem was clear to me. A solution that only one of my fellow countrymen that shared our unique cultural heritage and perspective could fully understand and appreciate the beauty and correctness of. It was now obvious to me what kind of device I needed to acquire to supply the clock input for my decrepit frequency counters.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 05:11:01 am
content: Quote from: hydrogen maser on March 29, 2016, 05:03:11 amI think you're on the right track....

author: edpalmer42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 05:28:22 am
content: "Nothing succeeds like excess" - Oscar Wilde He must have been thinking of Americans.I'm not an American - I'm just a Time-Nut!Ed

author: GEuser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 06:05:43 am
content: Imo , one should not invite glimpsers to glimpse if they are not ready for the shock (Did not you see the moviehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Me_In_(film)) , luckily most are looking at something else so there might not be too much collateral damage .I vote hydrogen maser for President , next , to fix the World !

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 01:21:07 pm
content: I'm still waiting for the donuts, hamburgers and happy meals to enter the story

author: Turbon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 02:10:34 pm
content: Well, I'm not American but I emphatize with your overkill mentality nevertheless...The otherday at work we came to talk about quality and I remember when it all changed to the worse in the late eighties. Everyone moved from best possible quality to enough quality correlated to quartal earnings.One suddenly got what one paid for - proprietary chips no one knew what their functions was so if it broke - ditch it and buy new. At this time we also got allmost all functionality on one huge board so no options to upgrade - they became static.Totally impossible to tweak unless one built external boxes that did the tweaking. Nowadays the tide has turned and all manufacturers again uses standard parts and there is a movement in trying to get stuff exceeding their specs - eevblog in some grade but even more is diyaudio an example of this. I'm an overkill person and I love measuring equipment from the eighties/early ninties, especially HPRegards

author: med6753
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 02:19:22 pm
content: Too bad Tektronix didn't get the memo.

author: Turbon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 03:09:10 pm
content: Well I am very happy med6753 if they decided not to jump on the train. I do believe the have a lot of proprietary IC's though on their quality boards (from the latter half of the 90'ies) I haven't checked, could be wrong - happy if I'm wrong. Remember that quality is different expectances from a variety of consumers.For me quality is long support expectance and built with that in the business plan. It is built on industry standards and upgradable when standards get refreshed. It is open and tweakable if I need to sharpen some bits of the specs. A wish is that it can brew good coffe tooRegards

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 03:42:21 pm
content: The US, like most of the other countries represented on this blog, is a big place. The US is more so than most. No one size fits any of us.As an American who spent his career in the defense industry I watched a continual drive to supply the very best kit possible. $500 toilet seats were one of the results. I spent much of my time railing against the over specification and quoting Stalin "quantity has a quality of its own".I actually celebrate the idea of getting what you pay for. No more, no less. Combine that for paying for what you need. For you time nuts and volt nuts that can be a lot of money, because for your own reasons you need a lot. For 99.9% of the rest of us the watch on our wrist provides all the accuracy we need. The tachometer I build for my model airplane doesn't even need 1% accuracy. The wattmeter for evaluating energy consumption does its job just fine with 5% accuracy. The board layout that is 20% bigger than I could get with another weeks work is just fine with me because my goal is what the board does, not how well I can lay a board out. I don't begrudge the other guy who gets his joy out of pulling another 5 square millimeters out of a design, or one more decimal place out of his time base accuracy.So there is another insight into an American hobbiest.

author: Turbon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 04:04:39 pm
content: Yo, as yo said CatalinaWOW - no one size fits us all which does fit with the idea of the very best level of quality you decide to pay for. My hope in this is that (realy hard to believe in it myself) the upgrades would be cheap or DIY. I laughed about the Star Trek economical idea a decade ago when I traded - no pay but a stray to better ourselves - I now see some very good low hanging apples in that tree of ideas and a better future for all. The cost - yes - everything has a price today - you will be watched! Would there be a difference against how it is today? You suspect you are watched against it is declared that you are watched - well then you know. Another view of quality against corporate domignon and there are as many others as there are wills on this planet. Where do we put down the stick - here but no further to save us as species on this planet? Quality control is the name of the game...Regards

author: zal42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 04:39:25 pm
content: As an American electronics hobbyist, here's the path my designs typically take:1) Dream up a massively overengineered, perfect system that does everything I could ever hope for and more.2) Begin designing that system3) Realize that the design will cost more in time, money and/or hassle than it's really worth.4) Toss out or water down features to simplify the design5) Repeat steps 3 & 4 until I have something reasonable.So I'm with you, Mr. Hydrogen! I would totally have worked in a cesium standard (or something even better if I could think it up!). But I would likely have ended up with an oven controlled oscillator.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 05:35:29 pm
content: Buying a caesium standard is OK but it's no good on its own, how will you know if it's correct?Buy two then you have a real problem on your hands if you get different readings from them.So, your solution is to purchase three of these units, that way if one drifts you can immediately spot the problem and take it out of service.Glad to help, my invoice will be in the mail

author: hydrogen maser
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 06:18:24 pm
content: Sigh, yes German_EE, this is just the beginning. Obviously I need a rubidium, a GPS disciplined OCXO another cesium beam and I'm sure a few more devices. Of course, all of them will be a little different and there will be no way to know what device is "correct" (whatever that means). Then it will be a quest to sync to traceable sources and then next thing you know you are a time nutAnd at that point I will probably actually try to acquire a hydrogen maser or build one myself.Of course I won't use the cesium to clock the frequency counters because it makes no sense, better off with just an OCXO for lots of reasons. It is The Paradox of Choice for hobbyists now, there are so many very interesting things on the surplus market it is easy to forget that perfect is the enemy of good and to have a tendency to acquire things just because you can now. Things that it was almost unheard of in the past for an individual to own. The other side of that is when you get something that is "just enough" you often later wish you had gone for something better.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 09:11:44 pm
content: I cheat. The DCF77 time signal transmitter is about 30 Km*** from my location and I use that as my primary frequency reference. The day that system goes out of specification there will be some very upset and/or embarrassed Germans so for now I let them do the hard work.***31391 metres based on the time for the RF to travel between their antenna and mine, once you become a true time nut calculating this sort of thing becomes second nature.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 10:02:32 pm
content: Australia used to have VNG. I can still hear the announcement .... " on 4.5, 7.5 and 12 Mhz ... ".Shut down in 2002.

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 11:05:41 pm
content: I just like the word...emphatize

author: Tomorokoshi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2016, 01:25:55 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on March 29, 2016, 10:02:32 pmI used to listen to WWV on the shortwave radio. For the fun of it."Coordinated Universal Time" ... "at 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 megahertz"...I don't remember the rest anymore.