Spent $600 on a fancy cable tester and it burned me bad

Last month I picked up a Fluke DSX-600 because I was tired of dealing with flaky coaxial runs on Cessnas. Thought it would save me time troubleshooting antenna lines... turns out it gave me false passes on three different installs. I spent two whole days chasing ghosts before I grabbed my old $80 tester and found the real issues. The Fluke was just too sensitive for the older shielding we deal with in general aviation. Ended up sending it back and sticking with my beat-up Harris unit. Anyone else have a high-end tool that just didn't work for our kind of work?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryang771mo ago

That Fluke DSX-600 issue sounds like a pain. I had a similar thing happen with a $400 antivibration mount I put on a Garmin G5. Company swore up and down it was the best thing for reducing panel rattle. First flight, the damn thing amplified a specific frequency around 2500 RPM and made the whole display shake worse than before. Pulled it out, went back to the cheap rubber grommets from the hardware store, problem gone. Sometimes these engineers overthink stuff that works fine simple.

elliot_grant381mo ago

Man it really does seem like a pattern across everything now... not just tools but cars, appliances, phones. They keep adding more features and complexity thinking it makes things better but half the time it just creates new problems nobody asked for. Like my buddy's new fridge has a wifi connection and touchscreen on the door... guess what broke first. Sometimes the old simple stuff just works because it was designed for real world conditions not lab conditions.