Oscilloscope Recommended for FE

[patmac]

Hey, I thinking about buy a used oscilloscope for FE research, but I've many doubts about the wide band recommended.

In the case to study radiant charging on Lead Acid batts appearently is necessary looking for resonance in the battery, FEG book (page 5-6) suggest this occurs about 1-6mhz depending of capacitance effects, but in the page 17 says is possible see this resonance effect with oscilloscope tuned on 50 mhz band.

Newman seems talk about this effect too in his book Energy Machine, in the page 69-70, Newman suggest is necessary a on oscilloscope able reads millionths seconds. Newman suggest some very important if you build a nonbalanced system then battery not able to catch all energy from the machine this generates many looses.

I was thinking if the frequency is not in resonance with the battery then the energy is wasted becase the battery and the coil is like a LC system.

So my question is , Is needed a Oscillospe on 20MHZ is suffcient to study this effects?

[jibbguy]

It matters if it is an analog scope or digital. With an analog "20 Mhz" scope, you should still be able to see roughly 50% attenuated spikes up to about
"40 Mhz", then it will roll off pretty quick after that (the time base resolution and DC accuracy will be "poor" at those F's; but probably good enough for "tweaking").

With a digital storage scope (or PC-based one), it greatly depends also on the max Sample Rate possible, that varies with different models/brands and whether you are using 1 or 2 channels simultaneously. But if possible, a scope with an analog Frequency Response of "50 MHz" would certainly be better, and have more future utility just in case (as most newer "stand-alone" analog scopes are now. Edit: for the same prices they used to sell the "20MHz's" for 5 years ago).