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Re: cap tester



All,

IMHO - the absolute best, no-brainer solution is to beg, borrow, buy, or
build a capacitor tester.  I've picked up old magic-eye type cap testers
for just a couple dollars at hamfests, and I bought my digital cap meter
at a hamfest for $15 a few years back.  As noted, you can also buy kits
for around the same price for use with your existing DVM.

Going through all the math is instructive and fun, and you might need to
use it to measure extremely low capacitances (such as a toroid), but just
being able to clip the leads onto a cap and get a reading out to a few
decimal places is well worth the $20 or $30 you can expect to spend to get
a decent cap meter.  Especially if you're sitting in your  basement with a
box of caps that you just bought at the local hamfest and you want to test
them quickly.

Steve Roys