Old school multimeter vs my new scope, am I crazy for going back?

So I've been torn on this for a few weeks now. I did a full avionics bench upgrade back in March, dropped $800 on a fancy digital scope with all the protocol decoding bells and whistles. It's great for tracing a flaky ARINC 429 bus on a 737 pack controller, saved me hours of poking around. But for simple stuff like checking a pitot heat element or verifying a relay coil's resistance, I keep reaching for my beat-up Fluke 87 from 2006. The scope is overkill, the menus lag, and sometimes I just want a dumb number I can trust. But my younger coworker says I'm stuck in the past, that the scope's waveform view catches intermittent stuff a meter will never see. I get that, but when a pilot calls from Phoenix complaining about a flickering display, I'm not dragging a scope up a ladder. Anyone else split their testing gear this way, or is it all-in on one platform for you guys?

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1 Comment

mark_green22d agoMost Upvoted

Keep both around and don't feel bad about it. I've got a scope for the tricky stuff, but my old meter is what I grab for quick checks, it's just faster and the battery lasts forever. That younger guy will learn, the right tool is the one that gets the job done without fighting you.