User:Deanhuster

A test, figuring out the site.

Dean Huster here, a guy who's been into hobby electronics since around 1960 (5th grade), during the heyday of vacuum tubes. Served in the U.S. Navy for six years (1970-1976) as a CTM2 --- Communications Technician, Second Class (E-5), serving in San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Puerto Rico, Okinawa & Pensacola. It was a tough life, but somebody has to do it. I specialized in the Navy in PMEL: Precision Measurement Electronics -- test and measurement equipment repair and calibration. After leaving the Navy, I spent six years with Tektronix at their Dallas and Oklahoma City Service Centers, working on probes, 200-series, 300-series, Telequipment, 400-series, 5000-series, 7000-series, 1500-series and TM500-series. I became proficient enough with the 1502 & 1503 TDRs that the District Service Center in Dallas was sending the ones they got in for repair to me in Oklahoma City. I left Tek after climbing as high as was possible as a technician (any other advancement would have required a financial suicide move to Santa Clara, Rockford MD or Beaverton), so I instead went to work for a new vocational school in Oklahoma City teaching electronics. At The Francis Tuttle Vocational-Technical Center, I'd finally found my niche, the thing that I really enjoyed -- sharing my knowledge with others through teaching and curriculum writing. After 15 years there, we moved to SE Missouri (Poplar Bluff area) for family reasons where I taught at the vo-tech there for 5 years until they decided to replace the electronics program with a computer repair/networking program -- I hate computers. But while there, I was also working as an adjunct instructor at Three Rivers Community College teaching industrial electricity courses and a print reading course. And also during that time, around 1999 or 2000, I was asked by Larry Steckler of Gernsback Publishing if I'd be interested in being the contributing editor (writer) of the monthly "Q & A" column in Poptronics magazine, a merging of the old Electronics Now and Popular Electronics magazines. The gig didn't even come close to paying for my time, but I never had so much fun in my life writing that column until Gernsback closed its doors two years later.

Meanwhile, just beginning to retire, I'm zeroing in on test equipment again, Tektronix equipment in particular. I have at least 120 items of Tek gear so far that I plan on refurbishing for my own hobby use and will resell the extra stuff after fixing it up and calibrating it. In addition, I've several pieces of -hp-, ESI, Fluke, Knight-Kit, Heathkit and EICO equipment that will fall into the same categories, except that I'll keep the Knight-Kit stuff since that was my first electronics purchases back in the mid-1960s, so has some pretty sentimental value to me. Meanwhile, I consider myself to pretty much specialize in the Tek 400-, 5000-, 7000-, TM500 and Sony/TEK 300-series as well as 500-series curve tracers, the stuff of the late 1960s through the early 1990s. I'm hoping to pull together all that I need for a good, high-end scope cal lab as well have enough other standards to handle items outside the normal oscilloscope line.

I don't even know if this will post properly, where it will post, who will or can read it or if I'm really doing the right thing. I'm hoping to be able to contribute in a very tangible way to Tekwiki with pictures, manuals and other documentation that will help out electronics hobbyists in any way possible. Thanks for taking the time to read this introduction of myself.

Dean Huster Electronics Curmudgeon