Had to choose between a Fluke and a Brymen meter. Went with the Brymen.

Picked up a new multimeter last week. My old Fluke 77 finally died after 15 years. I was gonna just buy another Fluke, but a buddy at the hangar talked me into the Brymen BM235. Said it's what Dave Jones uses. Honestly I was skeptical since it's half the price. But after tracing a weird intermittent fault on a G1000 harness, I'm glad I switched. The peak hold function caught a glitch the Fluke would have missed. Has anyone else made the jump from Fluke to something else and regretted it or been surprised?

3 comments

3 Comments

claire_wells871mo ago

My buddy who works avionics at a regional carrier switched from a Fluke to a Brymen and said the same thing. He caught a phantom voltage on a 787 that had his old Fluke totally stumped for weeks.

the_zara1mo ago

That lines up with something I read on an avionics forum a while back. A tech was troubleshooting an A350's landing gear circuit and the Fluke kept giving a stable reading while the Brymen caught a tiny AC ripple that was causing the whole issue. Apparently the Brymen has a much lower impedance on certain settings, so it doesn't load down faint signals the way some Flukes do. It's kind of wild how much a meter's internal resistance can mess with your troubleshooting, especially in modern aircraft with all their sensitive electronics.

caleb_thomas9327d ago

After I bought the Brymen I spent a full hour testing it against my old Fluke on random resistors and a garden-variety wall outlet. The Fluke's been dead for years but I kept it for nostalgia. @the_zara's right about the impedance thing, I noticed the Brymen showed a slightly different voltage on a circuit that had a long wire run. Probably means I've been blaming the wiring for years when it was actually my Fluke not loading the circuit right. Good tool but makes you wonder how many ghosts I chased with that 77.