Peak Electronics make a range of very clever hand held test equipment. We recently bought their LCR45 automatic inductance, capacitance and resistance meter for use in our factory. I was so impressed with it that I contacted Peak electronics with a view to stocking it. They agreed and I drove over to collect some stock. They are a local company specialising in the handheld test equipment market.

The LCR45 is worth of a little further description. It's a fully automatic meter, so unlike many others you don't need to calibrate it each time you use it and neither do you need to tell it what the component under test is.

For the radio amateur the LCR45 is likely to become an indispensable item in the shack. I have discovered that as I have got older the writing on components gets fainter and smaller. The LCR45 makes deciding if the capacitor is a 103 or 104 quick and easy! When measuring inductors it shows the series resistance too - handy for Q estimates. For the more advanced amateur it shows the impedance in complex form with the test frequency stated; handy for use with a Smith chart.

We have been using ours to pre-align tuned circuits and it has already paid for itself in time saved. Another use we have found is testing feeders on antennas. We just clip the meter across the antenna plug and read the capacitance. It's clever enough not only to tell us if there is a short but at which end. If there is a short in the plug it reads as a low resistance, if the cable is open at the far end it reads like a capacitor, finally if there is a short at the far end it reads like an inductor. Thus in one quick test it can indicate and locate a fault! I think it would be possible to use it to measure the length of coax cable but I have yet to try that.

I have also noticed that its pulsed test signal is handy for a quick test of HF receivers. It has several selectable test frequencies so you can use it as an audio generator for testing amplifiers too. It has another use at audio frequencies as it can measure speaker impedance - useful for selecting the best ear-buds for minimalist radios.

Also of great use in the shack is the DCA55 semiconductor analyser. Again it's fully automatic and looks set to save me ages searching for pin-outs on the internet. It analyses FETs and BJTs with ease giving an hfe reading as part of its analysis. I think my days of trying to read the faint writing on transistors by getting the sun to glint off them may be over.

These are just two of the range of instruments that we have in stock. Each one seems to be a real gem! Check them all out in our new test equipment section.