Everyone says you need the newest gear, but my best week came with a 15 year old multimeter.

We had a full avionics bay upgrade on a King Air 350 in Wichita, and the shop's fancy digital unit died on day two. I pulled my old Fluke 87 from 2009 out of my car, and it tracked down a tricky intermittent ground fault in the autopilot circuit that the new gear kept missing. Do you think we rely too much on new tech instead of just knowing our old tools inside out?

3 comments

3 Comments

coleman.avery23d ago

Damn, that's wild. So do you think the new gear is just too sensitive and filters out the real noise?

marywood23d ago

That bit about the old Fluke finding what the new gear missed really hits home. We had a similar thing with a stubborn fuel flow sensor on a Navajo last fall. The new digital tester kept giving us perfect readings on the bench, but my buddy's ancient analog gauge from the 80s showed the needle jittering just enough to spot the real problem. Sometimes the old stuff just shows you what the numbers don't.

paulperry1d ago

Read an article where a mechanic said digital meters average readings over time to look clean. That smoothing hides tiny spikes that old needle gauges catch in real time. Saw it with a flickering tail light, new tester said voltage was fine but a dumb old voltmeter showed the drop with each blink. The jitter tells the story numbers can miss.