Oscilloscope Tutorials

It’s inevitable that as you get more and more into the electronics hobby, you’ll find yourself in need of an oscilloscope. While multimeters are great for DC measurements, most of them are pretty bad at AC measurements, particularly at higher frequencies. For folks who have little experience with them, scopes can be baffling things. There are so many switches and dials and knobs, and they have a lexicon all their own. But all is not lost….

My friend Alan Wolke (w2aew) makes these great analog scope tutorials, covering subjects like probe selection, AC/DC coupling and timebase control which will help get you started understanding how to use these amazing tools. Alan drops a lot of knowledge here — you may have to watch these more than once to pick up all that he puts down — but it’s worth it. Knowing how a scope works will save you a lot of time when you make your measurements. Even if you don’t have you own scope yet, this is a good introduction to the terminology.

Check them out and enjoy!


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4 Comments

  1. Interesting to see a tutorial on using a dual timebase. My ancient Tek dual base scope just died. I replaced it for 20% of the Tek $ with a digital one. Now I don’t need a repetitive waveform to see detail way down the road from trigger!

  2. Eric Walstad, KC6NTP

    Thank you, sir. Just what I was looking for.

  3. Great! Will bookmark these for when I get my scope here in the US.

  4. I’m glad you like these videos. There are several more on my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/w2aew

    Also, there is a 2+hr long oscilloscope tutorial, based primarily on analog scopes, that was recorded during a "Scopes for Dopes" class that I taught to a local Antique Radio club earlier this year. It can be found here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZKMrzTGxLQ
    See the Notes for a time-line table of contents so you can skip to the sections that interest you.

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