A unique opportunity

I have been given a rare opportuity to be an Assistant Engineer at the radio group I work at as a board-op.

I'm not sure how much electronics experience any of you have but what I want to do is buld up a tool kit that I can use on the job. I'm considering getting an Osciliscope. What model/brand/features should I look for for both radio/audio (everything from the mic to the transmitter) and computer (PC) diagnostics should I consider.

Also I'm looking at getting a multimeter. I know Fluke is the best so what current model should I choose I have heard that the 74 is the one to get, however they no longer make this model. Or should I just get one of those Fluke scope meters they have?

What other tools would you recommend. I currently have a computer tool kit with screwdrivers etc., but I've never liked it and most of the computer screws I've used with it the drivers won't fit. So I want something better. I know there are complete kits with everything that I need in them and this is somthing that I would like. Any good places to get them? I know punch tools are a must and I will want and need Krone (66 & 110) with a Harris blade as well as a phone test set and all.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I would have thought that they would provide stuff like scopes and meters - if they need to use them for certification checks, they would probably have to have approved calibration anyway, and that's not cheap.

But I'd steer clear of the scopemeters for anything serious, regardless - they don't have anything like the resolution of a 'proper' scope.

Having your own hand tools is a much better idea, though. And make sure that you get something like a hand engraver to mark them. You'd be amazed at how often hand tools go walkabout... and don't get the cheapest of anything; it's a false economy. Over the years I have built up a reasonable collection of Lindstrom stuff. If you look after it, it can last a lifetime. Their stuff isn't cheap, though.

Yeah I know what you mena on them having the tools, however, the Cheif Engineer that I'll be working with uses his own tools so that's a good sign that they don't. U personally would rather use my own anyway. Thanks for the tip on engraving them. I most defiantely would do that. I was looking at Fluke's site the other day and the calibrated meters were't that much more than the "uncalibrated" ones. Now with scopes that may be a totally different situation alltogether. What sort of features would I look for on a 'proper' scope for the job? I'll check out the site and see what they've got. Thanks!

All I can do is suggest some of the tools that have been most useful to me over the years. I'm old and comfortably out of date.

Your most useful tool is calm, careful, simple thought. Add to this a thorough knowledge and understanding of the basics and an appreciation of some of the dangers (especially at transmitter sites). Much of the complex stuff is 'repaired' by swapping out these days. Knowing what to swap sorts the men from the boys.

Recently, the thing I've used most for audio testing has been the laptop with Cool Edit and a couple of transformer based audio interfaces. This gives you a great arsenal of diagnostics and test signals for all sorts of problems.

I personally like to have an old fashioned analog multimeter alongside the digital meter (which must have an audible continuity checker). The analog meter is much better for tracking ground problems and in high RF fields, but don't get an old one with unobtainable batteries.

Test leads are always a problem. If I were starting now, I'd try to standardise on something and then make adaptor 'tails' as and when to XLR, jack, croc clips, krone etc. etc .

I'd second Steve's view on the Scopemeter. Otherwise, I've only ever used obsolete Tektronix scopes that were passed down the company or passed to me as scrap and beyond repair. Again, the probes and other leads can need a lot of thought  and may cost more than you expect. Calibration has to be tested/renewed regularly to be of any value, and is rarely essential. You'll get a feel if an instrument gets so out of calibration as to be significant.

Calibration has to be tested/renewed regularly to be of any value, and is rarely essential. You'll get a feel if an instrument gets so out of calibration as to be significant.

It's not in the physical sense, certainly - but if you have a bureaucratic regime that insists on seeing calibration certs if you are claiming to remain compliant, it becomes rather more of an issue. I don't know how bad the FAA is from that POV, but it would certainly give them one less thing to gripe about, regardless.

I think that this only becomes truly significant when it comes to transmitter engineering - but that's rather more specialised anyway, and requires rather more than a scope to get correct.

The other thing that's well worth getting is a small portable tone generator that generates at a few spot frequencies and known levels. Teac used to make these, but I don't think that they are available any more. Rolls do one, but I don't know how good it is. It looks like the right sort of box, though.

To continue our double act:

Calibration has to be tested/renewed regularly to be of any value, and is rarely essential. You'll get a feel if an instrument gets so out of calibration as to be significant.

It's not in the physical sense, certainly - but if you have a bureaucratic regime that insists on seeing calibration certs if you are claiming to remain compliant, it becomes rather more of an issue. I don't know how bad the FAA is from that POV, but it would certainly give them one less thing to gripe about, regardless.

The other thing that's well worth getting is a small portable tone generator that generates at a few spot frequencies and known levels.

When the studio goes down, the calibration or otherwise of the test gear is pretty irrelevant. But the cost of regular recalibration may not be. Plus you might have to send it away to be done. Is a calibrated instrument still calibrated after Mr. UPS has his way with it?

The tone generator is fine for leaving at the remote site testing stl or other links, but I'd still go for a suitable laptop as the most versatile piece of audio test gear in a studio. You can generate and analyse all sorts of audio signals, spot frequencies and sweeps, generate or hook across data streams and all sorts of other fun things. It also works on batteries and has a loudspeaker. Just make your own interface box, calibrate it yourself against known test gear or other known equipment and you are away.

Thanks guys the info is great as always! I guess using a 'scope is not that important anymore? I will be gatting some trainning from the Chief Engineer so that will fill some of the holes. I have not had ANY formal training in electronics only what little I have read/tinkered with myself. I take it though not having any knowledge of electronics is not really that necessary as long as you can diagnose the problem to the board you need to pull. Anything byond that is a waste of your time to know I suppose. I guess my question should have been "if you were building you dream tool kit what would be in it?" A laptop is something I really want to get and I'm looking around for something good but it doesn't have to be the latest thing. As long as it has a serial port and an ethernet jack I'm fine.

Is a calibrated instrument still calibrated after Mr. UPS has his way with it?

That depends. If it's electromechanical, probably not. But you wouldn't use UPS to transport anything you were seriously worried about anyway. If if's a matter of adjusting and resealing presets, or even these days updating a lookup table in Esquared, then it almost certainly would be. Sending analog scopes away to be recalibrated is usually a complete waste of time - I keep a scope calibrator here, and that has alternative methods of conformity checking. Since it's hard to achieve more than 2% accuracy with a scope anyway (unless it's an expensive combined measuring instrument), it's hardly worth making a fuss about, and certainly not worth sending away.

The whole point about this isn't that any of this is necessary at all. It's simply a paperwork issue. Different institutions have different requirements, is all, and all I am suggesting is simply that before you go and spend a load of hard-earned cash, it's worth checking with the Chief Eng. that it's the right type of stuff for that particular environment, and the way he wants to work.

A laptop is fine and dandy as an audio test set as long as you aren't expecting to generate clean short-risetime squarewaves, or anything with a S/N ratio higher than the internal soundcard can manage - which isn't very much. To do better than this, you need an external converter, and even then you won't fix the squarewave problem. And it becomes a PITA to lug around, and the battery won't last long. Apart from that lot, it's perfect...

As a quick and dirty tone generator, you can't really beat a small battery-operated squawkbox. I'm not suggesting that you don't need the laptop - just simply that for a lot of tasks, it's a complete overkill.

I agree, I would need to have the laptop for updating the software on the Optimod 8400 and the Omnia 6 processors we have and for other stuff as well. The tone genrator you mentioned is something I've considered even without the current job offer. I take it the o-scope is not much of a necessary item as it once was.

AudioVAULT_Guy

Check out this link, this is my favorite "Tool-Kit" company.

http://www.jensentools.com/product/category.asp?parent_id=265

They ain't cheap, but I haven't come across better tools in my travels as Engineering Assistant. I'w been using my kit over the last couple of years and built a couple of studios to great success. If nothing else this is a great starting point for tools, then you can bouild your kit out from there.

Hope this helps and welcome to the club!

[**** Update *****]

AudioVAULT_Guy

Check out this link, this is my favorite "Tool-Kit" company.

http://www.jensentools.com/product/category.asp?parent_id=265

They ain't cheap, but I haven't come across better tools in my travels as Engineering Assistant. I'w been using my kit over the last couple of years and built a couple of studios to great success. If nothing else this is a great starting point for tools, then you can bouild your kit out from there.

Hope this helps and welcome to the club!

Thanks! I've already been looking at their kits. Good stuff! They used to have one that included a Fluke meter and a o'scope for about $3,000 but I see that they no longer have this particular kit. I'd realistically would need three seperate kits, one for electronics, one for computer/networking and one for telephone. I may just have to buy the meter and o'scope seperate and buy the biggest kit they have for everything else.

**** Update *****
After some searching on their site I was able to find a similar kit with the meter and scope that sells for $3300.

My experience in the UK is that if you have a decent toolkit, people on the station keep 'borrowing' things to fix their cars etc. What they don't bend or break, they lose.

I honestly think you'd be better just getting a sensible case and buying decent tools as and when. If the chief engineer is training on the job, there should be plenty of guidance there.

On the subject of laptops, you don't need anything particularly large, heavy or modern. The one I've been using most is about 2-3 years old and has a 1GHz processor. It is essential to get one with as good an internal soundcard as possible, which should get you something that will almost match a reasonable desktop soundcard for noise. At the risk of being a bore, Acer and IBM seem to me to be sensible makes to investigate. The real skill comes in putting together the interface boxes and lining the thing up so you know what it is generating or reading.

My experience in the UK is that if you have a decent toolkit, people on the station keep 'borrowing' things to fix their cars etc. What they don't bend or break, they lose.

I honestly think you'd be better just getting a sensible case and buying decent tools as and when. If the chief engineer is training on the job, there should be plenty of guidance there.

On the subject of laptops, you don't need anything particularly large, heavy or modern. The one I've been using most is about 2-3 years old and has a 1GHz processor. It is essential to get one with as good an internal soundcard as possible, which should get you something that will almost match a reasonable desktop soundcard for noise. At the risk of being a bore, Acer and IBM seem to me to be sensible makes to investigate. The real skill comes in putting together the interface boxes
and lining the thing up so you know what it is generating or reading.

Yeah I know on the tools growing legs, however I think that where I'm at that shouldn't be a problem. I plan to engrave my initals on then so that I can identify them if they do. Many of the tool kits I've seen have a good assortment of what I feel is the necessary tools. Yes it will be some OJT with the engineer and as soon as he gets back next week I'll pick his brain on the tools.

As to the laptop this is what I was thinking something a couple of years old but still beefy enough to be useable. I had thought about getting one of those Digigram Pocket VX cards as the sound card. They come with a "pigtail" of connectors and are fairly decent cards rather than going with the sound card built into the laptop. However I'm glad you gave me those particular laptops this way I have an alternative if I decide not to get the Digigram.

I'm figuring the tool kit, DMM, and O'scope will cost me roughly $3000 and another $200-300 for the laptop.

Acer and IBM seem to me to be sensible makes to investigate.

Which specific models would you recommend. I'm starting to look at specific models of everything so I can start my list of what I want and need.

I'm not too familiar with the various IBM models. I have an R50, which is a Centrino 1.3GHz and has trackpad and nipple (NB not an R50E which is completely different). It was cheap, is excellent for doing my accounts and other general use, but is not suitable for what you want. It doesn't have line-in and I hate the fact that the backup/recovery for XP comes on the same HD that I might want to change one day and there is no CD recovery option provided or theoretically available. You have to check with some IBM models what comes in the laptop and what in the docking station, plus whether you need to buy a different docking station to get some particular feature. I seem to remember that one I worked with had the CD in the dock, but the printer port was on the laptop, which was the opposite of what I needed. This older, more expensive model did have decent inbuilt sound, though.

The Acer I like best is an old Travelmate 223XC, which is a 1.1GHz Celeron. I have used mine and one owned by the local station. Both machines have had to have new batteries, but these were available. I've put a 60GB 5400rpm HD in mine and it just goes day in day out. The audio is OK, the fan is quiet and only runs occasionally, it has a knob for playback volume and the size is manageable.  The snags are: no firewire, and the usb is only 1.1, so backing up 60gigs to an external HD takes forever. In its bag I keep: a pcmcia wi-fi card, a usb ISDN TA (to give me net access on radio stations without compromising their network or finding a way round their weird phones), a cheap headset and a small webcam used to test with my son the concept of being able to use Windows Messenger to walk round, talk and show things to someone at the other end of the country.  Also two embarrassingly crudely made diecast interface boxes each containing a pair of recycled Lundahl audio transformers to provide the audio I/O. The great thing about this make of transformer is that the manufacturers have all the info about them on their site and these 'fell out' of some old equipment. The Acer psu is as awful for shash as all other laptop psu's I've used, so the transformer boxes help with this as well. The machine has real serial ports for testing RS-232 etc.

I also have an Acer TM 242, 2.4 GHz Celeron, which I got for a particular development project that required a 15" screen. It has a noisy fan and is a bit big and heavy, but otherwise OK. It has a shared mic/line socket, but I don't really like this as a format although it seems to work on this machine.

Also an even older 600MHz Travelmate with a 12" screen which  was great in its day and would still be usable for recording. These last 2 machines are mainly just used for software development and testing. I've had no trouble with any of the Acers, but in the UK Acer support seems to have a bad reputation. Spares would be a problem, I think. Like the IBM access to the HD is easy and memory can be increased easily. All the Acers were bought cheaply as end of line models. All of them have inbuilt audio performance which is roughly comparable with the SB Live and Turtle Beach cards I've had, and far, far better than, for example, a recent mid-range Compaq desktop that I was recently called to.

I have also sometimes used clone laptops (eg Medion) with usb audio devices. The inbuilt audio on these machines was universally dreadful and it was usually not obvious how to access the HD or even increase the memory.

I have used a Digigram pcmcia card on a couple of occasions, but can't actually remember much about it, except that it did work well. I do seem to recall some driver updates being necessary. In general I don't like pcmcia cards with dangling wires. I have too much experience of broken modem 'dongles'. In the places where I have worked, there is almost always someone hanging over you wanting the studio, so you need to get in, sort the problem, then get out fast. The last thing you need is a lot of delicate equipment with dangling connectors to have to tidy up before you leave.

Perhaps I should say that these days I mainly do small studio installations and live on-site mixdown OB recordings where the laptop is hung across the mixer output. In studio work the laptop becomes a universal signal source and test set. For the latter I have a few sets of audio files that I've made up to produce spot frequencies and sweeps and also for channel identification etc. I've got the laptop sort-of-calibrated so that I know what level it produces and is reading, and I frequently run with two instances of CE - one for output and one for input.

I do appreciate SteveG's point that specific test equipment may well be better in many circumstances, but it is a fact that, in my situation as a semi-retired freelance, I work in all sorts of different environments and have to get things working (as opposed perhaps to passing some arbitary standards test) at short notice. The laptop is the best bit of test gear I've ever used.