Wasted $400 on a fancy test set and learned a hard lesson

I spent $400 on a portable avionics test set last spring because I thought it would save me time on troubleshooting. Turns out it was too complicated for the work I do on older Cessnas at the base in Wichita. After three weeks of fighting with the menus and cables, I went back to my old multimeter and signal generator. Has anyone else bought high-end gear that just sat in the case gathering dust?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora_scott774d ago

Man that stings, $400 is a lot of burger money down the drain. My own version was a fancy oscilloscope I bought after watching too many YouTube repair videos, spent two months just learning how to turn the knobs right. Ended up using it as a glorified paperweight on my workbench for a year before I sold it for pennies. The old gear just works for the stuff we actually do, no need for all those extra buttons and screens that just get in the way. Makes you wonder if the manufacturers even test that stuff on real shop floors sometimes. What did you end up doing with the test set?

mila_flores84d ago

Can't agree, that scope probably taught you more than the old one ever did.

julia55720h ago

@cora_scott77 your oscilloscope story hit close to home, I read somewhere that most of those fancy test sets are designed for corporate jets, not the old birds we actually work on. I sold mine on Craigslist for $150 and went back to the multimeter.