Products > Test Equipment

Was your first meter a "trashy" meter?

<< < (5/18) > >>

themadhippy:

--- Quote ---When I was a kid the fuses had bits of wire threaded through them that you had to replace.
--- End quote ---
same here,but they were replaced with plug in mcb's not long after i started to play with mains powered toys.My first fuse blow was seeing if  a string of lights  would get brighter if i wired them in a ring,when i asked my dad his reply was try it and see,i learned a lot with that experiment.

Wallace Gasiewicz:
When I was about 12 yo I bought a radio shack meter.
Don't know what happened to it
Now use an old Fluke
And multiple analog meters. some of them military,some useful for Kilo volt testing.
And they look nice on the shelf.

Edit:  When I was 10 yo the Micronta would have been a pretty good meter
I think $10 then is $100 today.

TimFox:
When I was about 13, a friend gave me an ancient (pre-war) Simpson 260.
Amusingly, the symbol "M" on the ohms scale on the meter meant "1000", as in older accounting nomenclature, which I found confusing.
Being 13, I did abuse it, and the needle needed straightening, but I kept using it for over 10 years.
My first decent DMM is a Wavetek (pre-"Meterman") 15XL (3.5 digits, 2000 counts).
I still use two of those, since they don't have auto-range and they have very large digits.
Later, when we needed a few inexpensive meters at work, I ordered the Meterman version, which came in an orange case instead of the sober blue-grey of the Wavetek.
We named them "Barbie's first voltmeter", or "Barbiemeter" for short.

Pfriemler:
I voted at "Radio Shack". Back in the 70's there were no other options to get a meter.
Maybe it's trash. The first I got when I was 12 yo. Maybe from Japan (the housing says so). No FET, poor accuracy, but better than nothing. The copper damp inside the bottom case resulted from an attempt to measure current with parallel leads at 220V mains. I do not remember if the fuse was blown. Despite of two vaporized copper lines on the PCB and the lifted transparent plastic window there were no more damages to it. Later I managed to expand the 100mA range to 2,5A and something happend to the Ge diode. It's still functional, but not in use. The leads are still the original ones.
The TEL DM1000B I got ~14 yo. And it's still in use: resistor measurements can be done with 2,3V open circuit voltage (white LED glim) or 0,3V (no Si diodes will affect the readings) and the continuity checker is "analogue" - fast and with continuous lower tone frequency from 0-40 ohms. Best tool for checking switches and relay contacts. The 20A range I found outstanding, too. Next meter was a 90's METEX M3610D (Voltcraft), still in use (2000MOhm range!). Recently, I'm going for a Brymen 869s...

BillyO:
Was as trashy as you could get in 1972.  No selector switch - you needed to move the probes, only 9 ranges, cost the equivalent of $50 today, and you had to build it yourself.  :palm:

But I was chuffed as hell to have it!



Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod