Make it so confusing and badly coloured that by the time someone figures out that it's all nonsense you're and established brand

oooooooh Saturday y'all!

@Asmyldof Saturday

I liked this Tweet It's always easy to find fault in work you've never tried to do yourself, it's why I want to try everything at least once ^_^

By..

I have a really stupid question. I have some attenuators that I wanted to test, so I figured I'd take a voltage source, a volt meter and some cables. I then measured the voltage without the attenuators, and with. But somehow the numbers don't add up; I get attenuation values much lower than listed.. Am I missing something obvious? Also, multiplying the separate 3db and 2db ratios gives something different than the actual 2+3 dB configuration..

They are mini circuit attenuators rated from DC to 18 GHz, the bw S2w2+ for example

Is it really down to DC? and are you sure you're doing the voltage/power conversion correctly?

@abdullahkahraman Sah, Turd! Ay?

@KrishnShweta :-)

@user3183724 Unless you paid north of $500 they're not DC to 18GHz. They may reach near 18GHz, but very certainly no less than 10kHz

Nor does any "mini circuit attenuator" have enough room to create a completely flat attenuation profile over the entire bandwidth, whatever it is

Are batteries inherently noisy?

@Asmyldof I see your point, they probably list it as DC to 18 GHz because it goes close to DC, but not to actual DC. It's terminology that remains a bit confusing to me. So since my voltage source is DC, testing the attenuation with it doesn't make all that much sense? Mini circuits is the brand, and looking at their data sheet you are of course right that they are not completely flat, albeit quite. Any suggestion on how to determine it's attenuation in a more accurate way? Perhaps with a VNA.

@user3183724 Ah yes, mini circuits. Not as famous here as elsewhere I guess. Dave Jones has a video on using a DSO as a scanning "lower grade" S.A. with a function gen

@Asmyldof minicircuits.com

A quick search shows they have DC-12GHz attenuators for $16.

I've never had trouble with the quality of Minicircuits products.

DC to 18 GHz attenuator for $115: minicircuits.com/pdfs/BW-S3W20+.pdf

You could also just work out what the resistances should be for a 3 dB pi or T attenuator and ohm out whether the device matches those values.

@Asmyldof An attenuator is just a resistive Pi or T, no reason it shouldn't work down to DC.

@R_Misra Batteries are one of the least noisy ways to power a circuit.