ANYONE SERIOUS ABOUT GAINING KNOWLEDGE?

[Martian]

Yea, point taken. I have the same test set though so I can’t knock that part, haha.

What I like the most about him and the rest when using a scope is how they don’t show the box cars, they’ll just talk and say how it looks good. Or it’s rolling and jumping and you can’t tell wtf you’re looking at. Here, let me tell you how bad the other guy was but wait, I won’t show you anything but it was bad and now it’s good and see that there, see how good it is now.

Well, let's be realistic here.

Is he cleaning up splatter boxes? No.
Is he creating splatter boxes? No.

Remember, he only does "new sales" and I doubt these left the assembly line with cut limiters and other truck stop hacks done.
What he is doing, at best, is touching up the factory job because the factory job is a pass/fail system. it's not done for "optimal" it done for "between X and Y" or in other words, good enough.
Then he calls that a "tune" that "nobody else in the world can perform"
That is a DIRECT QUOTE from a video.

This same guy is installing 2SC2999 transistors in Stryker radios and claiming big performance gains.
Not only is it the wrong part for the circuit but it's also the wrong form factor.
But if someone else tacks a part in it's a hack.
Something he himself does.

So he qualifies as another hack when he does work he claims is done by hacks.

 

[TheRealPorkchop]

I meant I hadn’t seen him do anything, at all, just sit there and blabber on and on. Yes I agree with what y’all are saying. In the few videos I saw, he didn’t do anything. Nothing. Just sat there talking about how great he was and to pay attention. He didn’t attempt to do anything so no hack was committed.

Yes I was talking about Jokey Smurf, him and a few others I’ve seen needed to clean up and get organized. One thing they all seem to have in common is it seems they’re trying to not only convince their customers but also themselves.

 

[Martian]

I think Joker Man is ignorance on fire.
And in his mind it's the right way.

But clean waveforms don't produce the needle deflection he wants.
He also uses a meter without a dampened movement so when the needle starts to move forward the momentum carries it further.

This is how he gets this "500 watts peak power!" on something that might get 250 watts for 10 seconds because it was turned up to 11.

But listening to him it's obvious that it's ignorance on fire.

 

[PoDuck]

I caught a video of his once, and Youtube kept trying to feed me more of them in my recommended feed for two weeks. They are all the same. He acts like he's teaching something, and then says that in order to find the answer, you have to search through his videos, because he's not going to repeat himself. Then he says "pay attention" 57 times, and doesn't say anything that needs paying attention to.

The guy also says that you have to ask to see calibration certificates. With all the equipment he has, he should have a dozen calibration certs, but I've only seen him show one, and I couldn't tell what it was for.

Calibration is nice, but he overemphasizes it, as though it is extremely meaningful to CB radios, which it really isn't. For most things, a relative, or in the ballpark measurement is just fine.

 

[Martian]

The "Fine Tune" calibration that's a riot.
I can point out probably a dozen problems with his "calibration"
There are at least 4 or 5 right from the start just looking at the top 1/3 of it that you can see.

It's almost insulting to the industry that he puts that nonsense in his videos.
He is most likely ignorant of the process of getting an instrument like that calibrated.
(which does not mean someone goes inside and turns knobs)
And that's if I can find a legit lab that will even do one of those because NOBODY so far that I have called will. Not even Keysight. And they made the damn thing!
It's EOL and no lab wants to touch those things.

If it could be done it's a few grand to get one done on an instrument like that.
That's more than he paid for it.

One lab told me that I should put it on ebay for amateur radio operators to use and buy a new one.
How ironic.
But I also expected this when I started calling labs.

 

[PoDuck]

I sometimes think labs use calibration as a way to get in the door for repairs. Since parts are hard to come by for end of life equipment, they just refuse to do those repairs, because, in reality, they are just board swappers.

 

[Martian]

Module swaps on some gear is not by choice of the lab.
That's a manufacturer rule, and often for very good reason.
Some of it simply is not field replaceable.

The standards set forth also do not allow for calibration in most cases on EOL gear anyway. It depends on the gear. No suitable parts is usually the case.
Some parts have a finite lifetime that cannot be exceeded. If there is no replacement there is no certification.
A lab can end up having an accreditation pulled for playing shenanigans.

It's so expensive to become accredited that they won't risk that for an eBay special.

 

[PoDuck]

I haven't heard that. I know I get good deals on broken test equipment from a standards lab near me. From what they have told me, the equipment comes in for calibration and repair, but they can't repair it, and often the company that brought it in just leaves it for them to dispose of. Many pieces I've gotten from them date back to the sixties, and have fairly recent calibration stickers.

Anyway, I still speculate, as I don't know all the policies, but I've seen their benches, and they still use some pretty old equipment themselves. All their equipment is listed on their website with their calibration documentation too.

 

[Martian]

It just depends on what it is.
Specific items like communications testers use protocols that are obsolete or are prone to failure, or both. This is why they end up on ebay for mere hundreds of dollars.

What you see that's "old" is likely still in production, like the 3458A
It's been in production for decades. It's not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon.
What you see in a cal lab often are standards. They are old and their uncertainties are well documented.
That is the other thing that's important with test equipment: documentation.
If it's 30 years old and you have no documentation its simply untrustworthy.
The stuff from ebay tends to fall in this category.

If you have access to a lab, go talk to the metrologist. He or she can clear that up.
He or she is the one that decides what does or does not happen in that lab.

 

[PoDuck]

I just looked, and it appears they have updated much of their stuff. They still use a Tektronix 2465 oscilloscope, which I would guess is no longer supported. Their DC power source and measurement devices are old HP gear, but are still being produced by agilent. They have a new frequency counter. Their old one I now have, which was an HP 5340A, nixie tube version. They were using it up until it broke last year.

 

[unit_399]

I hadn’t seen him do anything, at all, just sit there and blabber on and on. Just sat there talking about how great he was and to pay attention.

I said it once and I'll say it again ... " Any "tech" that has to tell everyone how great he is, usually isn't. A really good tech's work speaks for itself."

- 399

 

[TheRealPorkchop]

Well it’s easy to tell in the short amount of conversation I’ve taken part in, Tommy Chong is no liked here as a radio tech. Neither is Jason “Beavis the Jokerman” either. Who else is known as a hack or a joke? Not that I’d ever be sending a radio to any of them, I’m just curious.

From a distance, and briefly glimpsing, the Fine Tune guy appears to be a real tech and his videos make it look like he has the right equipment to get the job done. Just looking briefly that is, not looking deeper into it or looking up numbers or whatever.

 

[Handy Andy]

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink."

With all that's going on - there are some great points being made here.

The one that stands out for me is, much of the equipment that companies are looking to throw away because it no longer suits their quality standards, is still by far - better than the quality of the equipment of yesterday.

But then - much of the equipment used yesterday, made the equipment we use today.

In that era, it was made by a human, even that - not many will ever know how the concept even got to this stage.

The changes are usually small, LED's replace Numitrons, LCD's replace LED, now flat screen and data loggers keep track of all the stuff that passes by the test leads.

Now? The Oscilloscope is just a novelty, a training aid, on a desk that sits in the corner - because the PC's, smartphones and tablets have replaced them because all they need is done with dongles off of that same equipment - and use the company wifi to upload the data to the cloud for tech or for anyone to see.

Good luck Porkchop - I hope the one you send your stuff to, doesn't use the rest of you to pay for their lunch

 

[StrangeBrew]

.... I hadn’t seen him do anything, at all, ....

This is pretty much what I get from his videos, but to be honest I haven't been able to sit through one to the end. Anyone who actually seen him do something has spent more time than I'm willing to watching his videos.

 

[Martian]

There is nothing to see because he doesn't do anything. It's a commercial.
But it's a commercial in which he bashes everyone else and he is Jesus Christ risen from the dead to work on CB radios.