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I dropped $400 on a Fluke 787 and it paid for itself in one shift | Avionics Technicians - Guest Forum

I dropped $400 on a Fluke 787 and it paid for itself in one shift

Honestly, I was tired of my old multimeter giving me flaky readings on 737 fuel quantity probes. Spent $400 on a Fluke 787 processmeter last month from a guy on eBay. First job with it, I found an intermittent ground fault in the wing tank that I'd been chasing for two days. That single find saved the airline like 10 hours of downtime. Has anyone else found a tool that ended up saving way more than it cost?

2 comments

2 Comments

kai8072mo ago

The weird thing about tools like that is how they expose the hidden cost of cheap gear. You think you're saving money with a $50 meter, but the real cost is all those hours you waste second-guessing readings or missing something obvious. It's like buying cheap tires for a work truck sure, they're cheaper upfront, but you burn through them twice as fast and the time spent changing flats adds up. Same thing with kitchen knives or even software subscriptions you cheap out on the wrong thing and it leaks time everywhere. Sometimes spending real money once is the cheapest move in the long run.

marywells2mo ago

Oh MAN, I gotta jump in here. That analogy with cheap tires is GOOD but it's actually not quite the same thing. With a Fluke processmeter, you're paying for ACCURACY and reliability, not just durability. A cheap tire still gets you from A to B without killing you, it just wears out faster. A cheap multimeter can give you a WRONG reading that looks right, and that's way more dangerous than just costing you time later. You could chase a ghost fault for DAYS or worse, sign off on something that's actually broken. That's how planes get delayed or worse. So it's not just about leaking time everywhere, it's about the false confidence cheap gear gives you. That's what really costs airlines and mechanics big money.