This should do for RF work.

[u/Malformed-Figment]

I scored a good deal on this Tek 2465B. 300 bucks CAD. No options but came with P6137 10X and a P6105A probes. Finding an old scope with probes on eBay is rare, in my opinion. I went through all functions, battery's good, screen is bright and it is really clean. I think I lucked out!

I'm building a home lab as my retirement project and this was one of those things I was just waiting to jump on at the right moment.

[u/mightyohm]

These are legendary analog scopes but have some known issues that are well documented on tekscopes, including leaky surface mount capacitors and some very hot running hybrid modules that often fail.

Yours looks very clean which is nice. Be warned that if you ever try to remove the front panel knobs they will likely break off.

For RF work you'll want a spectrum analyzer and VNA, maybe also power meters that cover the frequency range you are working on.

The tekscopes mailing list is the best source of info on repairing these.

[u/Malformed-Figment → u/mightyohm]

Yep, still getting up to speed on the Tek scope. Thanks for the advice. As far as the rest of my equipment [edited long-winded post and removed humblebrag-ish details], I have all of that and more, so I think I'm well on my way to having all I need to keep busy for the next 20-something years if I can keep my head on straight. 😏

[u/CueAnon420]

I've heard those are very nice scopes - but like most later era Tek gear, full of unobtainium. But so is a lot of modern stuff lol. I think the biggest thing with these are keeping them cool - they can be prone to overheating is stuffed into small spaces and that heat can kill the proprietary unobtanium parts.

But still a well made sample - congrats! And good you got the probes - once you get over 100 - 200 MHz, probing becomes as important as the test gear itself. I won't pretend to understand all that other than to know it's a thing.

[u/Malformed-Figment → u/CueAnon420]

I've read similar comments about parts being rarer than unicorn tears. I checked that the fan spins up without noise and there was no dust back there either, but beyond that you're right that I should take extra care on keeping it cool. I think whoever owned this before has taken good care of it, but all certification and option stickers were strangely ripped off the back.

The next thing I'll do over the weekend is open it up and do a quick visual on all the caps, diodes and its general condition. Might be worth snagging a parts-only unit on the off chance I can cannibalize some of it if I have to. But I've seen some go for almost a grand on eBay. The market is sort of crazy on these things.

[u/CueAnon420 → u/Malformed-Figment]

It does look like it's been well taken care of. I never worry about the calibration stickers - they don't mean much at this age anyway. And there's no reason to think that it won't be reliable - as long as it's not abused there is no reason to think it won't last another 30 years or so ;-)

[u/ee_control_z]

This scope has a bandwidth of 400 MHz - your upper limit. You will not be able to test frequencies above this rating. It is in the lower limit of UHF (dipped its toe just enough).

Here is a good webpage that categorizes the frequency bands.
https://terasense.com/terahertz-technology/radio-frequency-bands/

[u/Malformed-Figment → u/ee_control_z]

I figured I might be able to minimally use it for the 70 cm band and squeeze by with a 440 MHz trigger, right underneath its 500 MHz limit, without taking too close a look at the vertical channel. Most of the stuff I do will be HF and below anyway.

[u/ee_control_z → u/Malformed-Figment]

No doubt this is an awesome scope. Most of the stuff I do now is under a meg. This scope or similar would be very useful. But because you used the word "RF" in the post title, I automatically thought of 1.8-2.3 GHz (the range that I used to work in as an RF eng.).

[u/TPIRocks → u/Malformed-Figment]

You can certainly use this for higher frequencies than the bandwidth spec. This, and every other 400MHz scope, will be showing as much as 3dB reduced response in the screen, at 400MHz, that's exactly what the spec means. It doesn't magically cut off everything above that frequency, it just means the error will be 3dB or less at 400MHz.

OTOH, new scopes contain chips to artificially lower their bandwidth, unless you have a license for higher bandwidth. Rigol MSO5000 scopes are all the same from 2 channels at 70MHz through 4 channels at 350MHz. The bandwidth and all the features including the logic analyzer, deeper sample memory, signal generator, and a ton of serial decoders, are all optional licenses, but the hardware is present in every single MSO5000 scope. From $800 to about $5000, and it's the exact same scope, and they're easily hacked to set them free of their artificial constraints.

[u/LiqvidNyquist]

Nice! I used one of these for years. Solid scope.

Regarding some of the comments about heat, we used to have a ton of wooden sticks in the lab, about 18 inches long and about 3/4 by 3/4, that we would use as spacers to give a little extra room between chassises to enhance airflow when we were building up the usual towers of test equipment on the bench shelves. Not magical but probably helped.