Posted by Sherman in Idaho [162.158.106.207] on Wednesday, October 03, 2018 at 22:36:43 :
In Reply to: Re: OT; 120 voltac reversing motor....Help Please posted by Denis [172.69.62.193] on Wednesday, October 03, 2018 at 20:23:40 :
That is true, although the Fluke hand-helds do put more of a load on the circuit than the high-end system meters. I'll often put a load resistor (10K or so) across the voltmeter terminals when I suspect it's just detecting leakage currents.
While we're on the subject, one of the places Fluke hand-helds really shine compared to the cheap (e.g. Harbor Freight) meters is on noisy circuits. A cheap DVM will bounce all over the place when you measure, say, the battery voltage on a running vehicle that's using an electromechanical voltage regulator. It'll drive you nuts thinking something is really screwed up. But then you put a Fluke meter on it and it'll read a nice steady voltage. Of course analog meters are also really nice for ignoring noise. It's just hard to tell the difference between, say, 13.7 and 13.9 volts with an analog meter.