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Had to choose between a used Fluke 87V and a new cheap multimeter. I picked the Fluke and it saved my butt on a 737 nav fault yesterday.
The cheap one was $40 on Amazon. The Fluke was $180 off some guy on Craigslist. Took a gamble on the old Fluke and honestly the accuracy on the resistance readings was night and day. Found a corroded pin on the VOR antenna connector that the cheap meter would have missed completely. Has anyone else had a cheap tool lead you down a wrong path?
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oscarb771mo ago
Blew a whole afternoon chasing a phantom ground fault on an old Chevy once because my cheap harbor freight multimeter kept bouncing around. Swapped it for my buddy's ancient Simpson 260 and found the problem in five minutes. The cheap meter was just too noisy to tell a good reading from a bad one. Now I'm with you on the Fluke thing, I'll take a beat up high end meter over a shiny new cheap one any day. That corroded pin would have had you swapping whole boxes if you didn't catch it right.
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rileyellis1mo ago
Ha! At least you only wasted an afternoon, not a whole paycheck.
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