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[Diogo Nunes Pereira]

I always assumed they just took the standard RF Explorer apart and mounted it in a rack chassis.

That's what it looks like.

Not being familiar with the product I assume it suffers from the same abysmal sampling rates as the handheld unit.

Hi Scott. What do you mean by this?

It has an auto-RBW wich is span dependent; For resolution I just go low on span. Here are some of my usual "span-sets":

40MHz - room for 5 TV channels on screen (Yeah... I'm in Europe)
80MHz - room for 10 TV channels on screen
28MHz - more resolution for scans I need to import to WWB. Gives me a step every 250kHz.

There is Windows software available. Touchstone Pro is $49.

Also, there's the FREE windows client, from the official RF Explorer website - here!

I still get better plots from the free client than from Touchstone Pro - which I also own. Averaging is key, and the windows soft does it.

3G model or 6G model might be just the ticket.

Thoughts?

I have the 3G combo. It has two modules: the SUB1G (240-960) and the SUB3G (15-2700). Mostly I only use the SUB1G (left antenna)- this module has better specs (noise floor, amplitude accuracy) - and because most of the time the gear is UHF and most of my scans are limited to the TV channels bands.

The 3G is becoming usefull nowadays as I'm scanning DECT band - one of my clients has a couple of FreeSpeak2 intercoms.

Notice the SUB3G module also goes below into VHF, and that's probably useful for people in the US.

[DavidTurner]

The free client doesn't export pre formatted csv files for wwb. At least the version I got didn't.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Diogo Nunes Pereira]

The free client doesn't export pre formatted csv files for wwb. At least the version I got didn't.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I suffered with that for ages...

I've even wrote a tutorial on the procedure to make the scans compatible.

Recently I found out changing the language settings in windows is all it takes. If you live somewhere where the decimal is a point (in Spain the decimal is a comma) you should be good as long as you select a comma separator for .csv files in the RF Explorer settings.

[Scott Holtzman]

That's what it looks like.

Hi Scott. What do you mean by this?

It has an auto-RBW wich is span dependent; For resolution I just go low on span. Here are some of my usual "span-sets":

40MHz - room for 5 TV channels on screen (Yeah... I'm in Europe)
80MHz - room for 10 TV channels on screen
28MHz - more resolution for scans I need to import to WWB. Gives me a step every 250kHz.

Also, there's the FREE windows client, from the official RF Explorer website - here!

I still get better plots from the free client than from Touchstone Pro - which I also own. Averaging is key, and the windows soft does it.

I have the 3G combo. It has two modules: the SUB1G (240-960) and the SUB3G (15-2700). Mostly I only use the SUB1G (left antenna)- this module has better specs (noise floor, amplitude accuracy) - and because most of the time the gear is UHF and most of my scans are limited to the TV channels bands.

The 3G is becoming usefull nowadays as I'm scanning DECT band - one of my clients has a couple of FreeSpeak2 intercoms.

Notice the SUB3G module also goes below into VHF, and that's probably useful for people in the US.

On the 40Mhz range how often is the display refreshed?  I read somewhere it's silly slow, like 4 seconds.  I am use to real time spectrum analyzers like old school IFR and Wavetek

[Diogo Nunes Pereira]

On the 40Mhz range how often is the display refreshed? 

Hi Scott.

For a 40MHz span - using the Windows software - sweep time is about 0.2 seconds in my unit, averaging at 4.7 sweeps per second.

This provides 420kHz RBW with a step every 357.125 kHZ (this is about what you get dividing SPAN/112 - no matter the span, the RFE allways plots 112 points.)  Fastest I could achieve was 6.8 sweeps per second @ 2.8MHz span. With the span to its maximum (600 MHz) sweep time is 1.2 seconds. So, it's never as slow as you read somewhere.

I like the 28MHz span because that divided by 112 gives me a point every 250 kHz - round numbers. I usualy take 12 captures (from 470 to 806 MHz) and get this data on WWB. It's good enough resolution to get an idea of DTV levels to start excluding channels.
I wish I could have more precision (25 kHz) but that would make it impractical. When I have time in my hands I'll try and make Matt Dale's phyton script work for me.

Maybe other analysers go faster, but hey it's a 140$ unit. This (the RFExplorer) and Shure AXT600 are the only analysers I can get my hands into around here. I have a client who's going to borrow me an Anritsu next week. Hopefully I'll understand how to make it work...

Salud,

D

[ProSoundWeb Community]