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That senior tech at O'Hare told me my DMM was lying to me, and he was right
Ngl, I used to trust my Fluke readings at face value until a guy with 30 years at American Airlines pulled me aside while I was troubleshooting a 737's weather radar. He said the impedance on my coax run was way off and my meter was giving me a false pass because it wasn't loaded. Switched to a time-domain reflectometer after that, and now I catch crap like cracked dielectrics that a regular multimeter just misses. Has anyone else run into coworkers who swear by the old school analog meters?
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david12318h agoTop Commenter
Old school analog guys know that meters need a load to show real world faults, that's why they laugh at digital readings on open circuits. A TDR will show you a 1 inch crack in the dielectric that would pass DC continuity all day long. Once you've seen a coax that reads perfect on a Fluke but fails under transmit power, you never go back to trusting a basic multimeter for RF work.
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markc8418h ago
It's like how people trust a car that starts fine but ignore a weird noise until it leaves them stranded. Easy to miss the real problems when you only check the obvious stuff.
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