[Boatanchors] DE-MAGNETIZING A METER

[Drew P.]

Bill wrote:

"I have a nice 200 ua meter I want to use in a homebrew wattmeter but the movement is magnetized and reading about 1/2 scale.  It's not dirt...the vane moves freely down from full to half scale and down from mid scale to zero but it always returns to mid scale."

I remedied this type of problem with the moving-vane meter in my Utica 650 6 meter transceiver by sticking a magnet to the back of the steel front panel next to the meter.  Orienting the magnet produced the mechanical zero.

Note that your meter must be a moving-vane type for this trick to work.  This will not work for a D'arsonval (moving coil) type meter.

Drew