67Dart273
Well-Known Member
My best Fluke may not make it. It powers up with a new battery, but it was somewhat warm, and the battery leaked. The others I have in the basement are "smokey."
So I thought I'd buy an inexpensive tester to get by until I get something better, or see about getting the Flukes cleaned up. I bought the small one, could not really see in the package very well. It turns out:
For reference, the meter is about 5" long x 1 1/2 wide, and a bit difficult to juggle, but the POS and dangerous part is this: The leads from point to entrance in the tool are only 9" and there is no way, as in popular testers, to insert one test prod into the rear of the case so that the entire tool can be hung on to and used as a prod. Worse, the test prods are only about 2 5/8 OAL so getting your fingers tangled in something is a possibility. So here you are, trying to reach a hot spot in the box, etc, while dangling this miserable toy, and trying to keep it dangling so that you can see the lights. The leads are nowhere near long enough. And why in hell does it need a battery? I had a tester, decades ago, with scaled lights and it needed no battery. And I actually FOUND my old solenoid type tester, a Knopp K60. NO BATTERY!!
And you can still BUY them!!
The thing about the K60 is, they call it a "low impedance" tester. I has a sort of solenoid in there that activates the moving needle, and that solenoid prevents you from being fooled by "phantom voltage" as can happen with solid state multimeters
Below, the ol' reliable Knopp
Bought this kit today for 40 bucks.
This POS is dangerous and useless and should be outlawed
So I thought I'd buy an inexpensive tester to get by until I get something better, or see about getting the Flukes cleaned up. I bought the small one, could not really see in the package very well. It turns out:
For reference, the meter is about 5" long x 1 1/2 wide, and a bit difficult to juggle, but the POS and dangerous part is this: The leads from point to entrance in the tool are only 9" and there is no way, as in popular testers, to insert one test prod into the rear of the case so that the entire tool can be hung on to and used as a prod. Worse, the test prods are only about 2 5/8 OAL so getting your fingers tangled in something is a possibility. So here you are, trying to reach a hot spot in the box, etc, while dangling this miserable toy, and trying to keep it dangling so that you can see the lights. The leads are nowhere near long enough. And why in hell does it need a battery? I had a tester, decades ago, with scaled lights and it needed no battery. And I actually FOUND my old solenoid type tester, a Knopp K60. NO BATTERY!!
And you can still BUY them!!
The thing about the K60 is, they call it a "low impedance" tester. I has a sort of solenoid in there that activates the moving needle, and that solenoid prevents you from being fooled by "phantom voltage" as can happen with solid state multimeters
Below, the ol' reliable Knopp
Bought this kit today for 40 bucks.
This POS is dangerous and useless and should be outlawed
Last edited:
