SAS Super 90!!

Archived from radmon.org - originally posted 06/12/2021

I have bought a 'PBI Microbial Air Sampler SAS Super 90' just for the simple fact it looked proper funky! I have no idea if it works, or how it works, or even exactly what it does, but bought it for shits and giggles. I paid £15. Working, they are going for about £1000!

I care not for testing microbes in the air, so I figure I can make something with it. So far I have thought I can turn it into a ridiculously powerful flash light. Something around 100w LED. I could use a liquid cooler in the body, LED and smallish heatsink at the end, use the display for something, temperature, power and battery remaining, and have a large LiPO pack over my shoulder. Or I could turn it into a nice portable PM2.5/PM10 air quality meter, and I have all the parts for that already. Or I thought of maybe a portable homebrew Radon gas meter. I could pull air inside the body and have it run through a filter. There could be a GM tube close to the filter, with a servo operated shield that shields the tube from the filter when collecting air, then samples for x seconds, then repeats. Any gamma radiation (Radon decay chain) coming from the filter would be measured by the counter.

I really think I have to do something with it because it just looks so cool! There is some kind of cap missing from the end, maybe a filter or something, but that doesn't matter.

Hmm, thinking about it I could have a SI8B or similar tube up front, I already have some low sensitivity tubes (DOB50, DOB80, SI3BG and I think 3G8B is also low sensitivity.) I would also want a very sensitive tube monitoring background. I do have a couple of SI22G's that would probably work. Then the electronics... SD Card logging, GPS, an analogue meter would be nice, but that would have to replace the LCD and I don't think it would look quite right. I'll have to wait until I get it to work out exactly what can be done with it. I do think it would be a great project.

And today I received my SAS Super 90!

The space inside the case isn't large enough for the SI22G tubes. Plenty large enough for SBM-20s, but I wanted something with the sensitivity akin to the SI22G. I'll have to look about for something suitable, or think of something else.

And now I have just the right tube for this project. It is an SI8B pancake GM tube. 80mm case and about 60mm window. It will be good for hard and soft beta and gamma. Now I just need to find some other tubes to fit in the base for background monitoring.