Some very basic electrical questions

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arnethormodsen
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Some very basic electrical questions

Post by arnethormodsen »

Just got my 2206 yesterday. A couple of questions come to mind right away. I plan to use it quite a bit for work on old tube radios. The PC I plan to use will be running on batteries most of the time.
Given this:

1. I'm concerned about the lack of a "true ground" in this arrangement. I'm thinking I should make up some kind of small BNC adapter with a ground lead on it I can run to "true ground" (An 8ft copper-clad stake driven in the ground just ouside my work area, I take grounding really seriously... :-) Is this really necessary? There's a ground clip on the probe I'm using, but it's been known to pop loose sometimes. My old scope (size of a small suitcase) is inherently grounded to the wall socket so I'v enever needed to think about this before.

2. Voltages up to 500V may be present in these old radios. I am going to use a good quality 10:1 attenuated probe. Reading the specs about overvoltage protection I'm assuming that even if I do something really stupid I'm OK because I'm under the 100V protection limit with the attenuated probe. Is this correct?
Thanks,

--arne

Martyn
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Re: Some very basic electrical questions

Post by Martyn »

What you are proposing is perfectly OK. As my colleague says there are many ways of getting shocks from old radios so better to be safe.

We are generally more worried by people who don't even consider what they are connecting to before launching into an investigation.
Martyn
Technical Support Manager

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