SPECTRUM ANALYZERs cost a ton of money, good ones go for $10k and up with brand names like HP, Motorola, etc. Geeks buy used ones for a couple k just to have one, but in reality they’re not terribly useful. A Radio Shack scanner is a good substitute for freqs we use.
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It’s just a scanner with a graphic display. You need a decent receiver that scans and a display. If you get the good ones they’re calibrated in freq and amplitude (down to -100 dBm).
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Oh wait, this just in! You can get a handheld version from China for fifty five bucks, sixty something with shipping.
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Here’s a view of the WX channel, 162.4 over in Omaha. The sweep is on narrow, only a hundred kc either side so you can see the bandwidth of the signal is like, 20 kc or so. That’s right, like our signals, 5 kc deviation and BW 20 to 30 kc. Here’s the same display when the weatherman isn’t talking (no deviation):
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Another thing you can do is set the sweep for 10 Megs or so, say 140 to 150 Megs, and look at our 2M band. Every so often you’ll see a spike show up in the upper half, say from 6 to 7 boxes across, and with a little practice tell the difference between 82 and 94. What’s that above 7, is that Bellevue people talking on 147.39?
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In the not so old days when cars were just getting digital dash instruments, some brands had a bunch of noise (garbage signals) in our band. A scanner could find the signals, but a Spectrum Analyzer is so much prettier and quicker. (YAESU VX-5 and VX-7 H/Ts had a Spectrum Analyzer display, but you had to go to the manual to remember how to set it up.)
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The Tiny SA will be on display Saturday at Lake Manawa. Bring your car.
(It was previously shown at the Co/Bluffs Flea last month by Jake NOORU.)