Re: wavetek 27XT meter

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Ben,

At 02:55 PM 7/18/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi Terry,
>  I've been considering getting one.. but I have some
>reserve about them.. 
>
>How do you measure capacitance/inductance with the meter?
>Can you do it directly with the test leads or does the
>meter have slots in the body? 

It has both.  I just used the meter leads to check a bunch of primary caps
and primary coils and it was within 5% and a few uH in all cases.  Normally
I would think the leads would mess it up but it seems to compensate very
well.  I have never seen a handheld meter that seemed to take such
measurements with so likke error disregarding leads and such!

>My current meter will only
>allow you to measure through the slots in the body.. which
>doesen't work so good for my transmitter cap where the
>terminals are 1+ feet apart.. ;)

This meter actually seems to work better than my old LCR meters.  The newer
electronics in it seem to "know" what they are doing.  Capacitance is not a
great challenge, but sub 100uH inductance are with a leaded meter.

Here is a table of readings vs known values for the primary of my big coil:

Turn  Reading	"Actual" (in uH)
0	0	0	
1	1	2.5
2	3	4.6
3	6	7.6
4	10	11.7
5	15	16.7
6	21	22.8
7	28	29.9	
8	36	38.0
9	46	47.0
10	56	57.3
11	67	68.7
12	80	81.0
13	94	94.6
14	109	109.5
15	124	125.8
16	143	143.3
17	161	162.0
18	181	182.2
19	204	203.9

Pretty good for simply taking a leaded meter and probing the turns ;-))
Far far easier than the original standard caps, signal generator, and scope
setup used to find the real inductances.  Easily close enough to dry tune a
coil.

Cheers,

	Terry






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