[Elecraft] Recommended Fluke?

[Jerry Kincade]

Another happy Wavetek 27XT user!  I've had mine for 5 or 6 years, wouldn't
part with it. Faster and just as accurate as my Fluke meters, well fused
(important), and inexpensive. I like it better than my Flukes because I
dislike autoranging (most autoranging functions are slow as heck), and
prefer to manually set my meter ranges - so the 27XT gets much more bench
use than the Fluke stuff. It checks inductors as well as capacitors. It's
also got a no-frills freq counter function, good to about 20 mHz. I checked
it against my HP bench counter, and it was very close, but only reads to 4
digits, of course. Handy to see if you are in the ball park.. Best little
$100 meter around, IMHO! Fluke, who knows a good thing when they see it,
recently bought out Wavetek, and is still marketing the Waveteks as their
economy line meters under the "MeterMan" name. I think they are now bright
orange. I'm not knocking Fluke, they make fine equipment and I own some, but
when they tried to make their handhelds totally idiot proof with
autoranging, they also made them clumsy and slow to use, far as I'm
concerned.

I second the motion on the analog meter - but instead of the Simpson 260
(which, being a VOM, will load a circuit under test pretty badly) I'd find a
good clean VTVM that works (with original probe!), and hang onto it. Totally
indispensable around the bench for alignments of all kinds. The Heath IM-18
is a good one, there are many others, mostly kit-built years ago. I think
mine is an Eico 222 that cost me $5 plus the cost to recap it's tiny little
power supply. It works great.
73, Jerry W5KP

Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Recommended Fluke?


> Mike McCoy wrote:
>
> > My Simpson analog meter is working fine but my digital multimeter isn't
so
> > I'm looking to pick up a used Fluke (I'm thinking bench model). Any
advice?
> > I'm thinking along the lines of an 8010, 8050 or maybe even an 8800. Any
> > recommendation and/or particular model I should consider ?
>
> I'd be more inclined to go with a handheld meter. It's more portable,
> which is sometimes handy. But you know how you use your meter, so make
> your own decision. Used handheld meters are likely to have been abused,
> so I'd buy new unless I was convinced that a meter I was looking at was
> in good working order. I don't have any advice on the specific models
> you mentioned.
>
> By the way, hang on to the Simpson. Analog meters are handier than
> digital for peaking and nulling adjustments. And there may be occasions
> when you want two meters at the same time.
>
> > Also, I've never had a VOM that measured capacitance... is it a
worthwhile
> > function?
>
> I found the capacitance function on my DMM (Beckman DM27XT, now
> Wavetek/Meterman) to be a real lifesaver when I was building my K2.
> There were a couple of capacitors with really hard to make out markings
> (not just that they're small - a magnifier will take care of that - but
> impossible color combinations to boot. Red markings on brown
> bodies??!!), and the meter was able to tell me which caps were which.
> It's also handy for getting an idea of the range of an air variable
> capacitor.
>
> It's not perfect, though. DMMs don't usually have any way to null out
> the stray capacitance of the meter and test leads, like dedicated
> capacitance meters do. That means you can't get accurate measurements of
> small caps; anything under 1000pf is somewhat compromised, and caps
> under 100pf are way off.
>
> Still, it's good enough for a lot of purposes, and it doesn't add a lot
> to the price of a DMM, at least not in the case of new handheld meters.
> And if you find yourself needing more accuracy, you can always buy a
> dedicated meter to supplement your bench.
>
>
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