Spent $400 on a Fluke meter and it paid for itself in one shift

I was always using the cheap $50 multimeters from Amazon and they kept giving me weird readings on the Garmin G1000 buses. Picked up a Fluke 87V after my lead tech kept yelling at me about false voltage drops. Anyone else notice the cheaper meters just can't handle the noise in modern glass cockpits?

2 comments

2 Comments

jessica_miller1mo ago

$400 bucks and it paid for itself in one shift? Sounds about right when you factor in the time you wasted chasing ghosts with that cheap meter. The 87V is basically the gold standard for a reason, those noisy G1000 buses will make any budget multimeter look like a toy. Did you notice a big difference in the capacitance readings too, or just the voltage noise?

alice1211mo ago

My cheap meter once told me a battery bus had 48 volts when it was actually dead as a doornail. Chased that gremlin for two hours before my lead walked over, plugged in his Fluke, and had the answer in five seconds. Felt like a real genius that day, standing there with my $50 junker while he fixed the problem I already should have solved. The 87V definitely paid for itself the first time it saved me from looking that foolish again. Did you grab the carrying case with yours or just go bareback?