A 30-year vet told me to stop trusting my multimeter

Dave from the hanger next door caught me chasing a ghost signal on a King Air. He said most guys miss intermittent faults because they rely on the meter instead of a scope and a wiggle test. Has anyone else had a senior tech change how you approach a problem like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

susan_ward23d ago

Stop trusting your multimeter" is bold, but I get it. A wiggle test catches loose connections that a meter just can't see. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather spend ten minutes shaking wires than chasing ghosts for an hour.

paul11723d ago

Three times last week I found intermittent shorts by just twisting a harness back and forth while the meter was showing dead stable readings. @susan_ward, you're absolutely right about trusting that wiggle test over a multimeter when things get weird. Multimeters are great for static checks but they lie to you when a connection is barely hanging on by a thread. I've learned the hard way that chasing voltage drops for an hour only to find a loose pin makes you feel like a real fool. So yeah, give me ten minutes of shaking wires any day over that headache.