Haha, my situation is pretty similar. I saw the 181 at a local surplus dealer when I was sourcing an AC power supply for work. I couldn't leave it gathering dust on their shelf so I brought it home to gather dust on my shelf instead. That must have been well over a year ago as I've moved into a new lab since then. In that time I've only used it for monitoring a 10V reference, so I've never actually seen the low voltage range in action... hope it works!