Milestone Technologies

a division of Milestone Technologies, Inc. "Everything for the Morse    Enthusiast!"

Our friend and colleague Neil Hecht passed away on August 19th, 2015.  This page will remain in place indefinitely, but the products listed here have been discontinued and are not available.   --N1FN 08/29/15

L/C Meter IIB From Amost All Digital Electronics, the L/C Meter IIB is a hand-held, digital inductance and capacitance meter with a sixteen character LCD with four digit resolution in each mode. Thus the maximum resolution for inductance is one nanohenry (1 nH) and for capacitance one  tenth of a picoFarad ( 0.1 pF).  Maximum measurable values are  150 millihenry (mH) and  1.5 microfarad (uF). The unit features AUTOMATIC RANGING and SELF-CALIBRATION. Each L/C Meter IIB is hand-assembled in the US. SPECIFICATIONS Range: .001 uHy (1 nHy) to 100 mHy (most units measure to 150 mHy) .010 pf to 1 uF (most units measure to 1.5 uF) AUTOMATIC RANGING Accuracy: 1% of reading typical Typical means the average error of 83 different components compared to an HP4275A digital L/C meter (test frequency 1MHz) for components ranging from .1uHy to 1mHy and 2.7pf to .068uF, B&K 878 digital LCR meter (test frequency 1KHz) for components ranging from 1mHy to 100mHy and .1uF to 1.6uF. (L/C Meter II is characterized for hobby or non-critical commercial use) SELF CALIBRATING Display: 16 character LCD display module Four digit resolution Direct display in engineering units (ie: Lx= 1.234 uHy / Cx= 123.4 pF) Operating modes: When the Lx and Cx switches are off the ZERO switch acts as a MODE SELECT. The following modes are sequentially selected READY MEASUREn MODE - measure Lx or Cx and display in nano units when applicable READY MEASUREu MODE - measure Lx or Cx and display in micro units (ie: .01000 uF instead of 10.00 nF) READY MATCHn MODE - first measures your reference component Lz or Cz and displays its value in nano mode measures subsequent components, Lx or Cx, and displays the difference (Lz-Lx) or (Cz-Cx) in nano mode READY MATCHu MODE - first measures your reference component Lz or Cz and displays its value in micro mode measures subsequent components, Lx or Cx, and displays the difference (Lz-Lx) or (Cz-Cx) in micro mode READY MATCH% MODE first measures your reference component Lz or Cz and displays its value in nano units measures subsequent components, Lx or Cx, and displays the percentage difference (Lx-Lz)/Lz*100 or (Cx-Cz)/Cz*100 as percent. range is -100% to +9999% maximum resolution is 00.01% L/C Meter IIB zeros out stray inductance and capacitance by storing their values in RAM and subtracting them from the measured values. It can zero out any value in its range allowing longer test leads and slightly improved accuracy over L/C Meter II. L/C Meter IIB works by measuring the shift in frequency caused by inserting an unknown into it's oscillator tank circuit. A PIC16C61 micro-controller measures the frequency before and after. It then computes the value of the unknown using a floating point math package and displays the result on a 16 character intelligent LCD display. L/C Meter IIB will NOT measure inductors designed for 60 or 120 Hz applications such as power transformers, filter chokes or motors. The minimum test frequency is about 20KHz and these devices have enormous core losses at that frequency. The LC Meter IIB is powered by a 9V battery, not included..

The LCM2 and 2B were formerly available as a kit-- here are some comments from builders and users.

Here's a review that Patrick Kvitkauskas posted on QRP-L in 1997:

From: pmk@
Subject: Just finished the LC II semi long
Date sent: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 07:53:15 EST

I ordered the LC II Kit  Friday night after visiting the web site around 10:30 est and Marshall had his watts line forwarded to his house and interrupted him I am sure but he was very nice. I went to the local surplus store to get some parts for the 38s updates and mods and picked up a handful of toroids knowing the LC meter was going to show up in a day or two. When I got home there it was in the mailbox (Monday, he must have shipped it Saturday). I pushed aside the 38s on the work bench and opened the box.

Construction. Well, I'll have to say it was very harmless to put together and went together very well. It said install the parts in no particular order and away I went. I always stress to everyone read the instructions before you start but thought it looked to simple and away I went. There were a few notes there that would have saved me about 5 minutes but still had it operating in under a hour. The only calibration was setting the contrast on the LCD display and then away I went.

Operation.  I am not an engineer or guru by any means (that is why I purchased it) but I started picking up caps and it was working great there. I had the toroid wound up for the stock 38s 5 watt mod. Shorted the test jacks to zero the meter, then put in the wound up toroid. Low and behold there it was 2.874 micro Henry. Yeah. Supposed to be 2.9 uHy but that is close enough if you round it off....

All in all I am very happy now and think I am going to try it out on the Pixie 2 that Chuck Adams had on his web site.

I wish I knew more on what I was doing and all the features it will do for those more experienced than myself.

My thanks to Marshall

72/73 de Patrick KD4OBQ

"I prior purchased L/C Meter kit and Frequency counter/display kit, these kit is a superb product. I utilize this product. "

"I purchased the L/C Meter IIB through you  and got it assembled shortly after it arrived last week.  I had read over the past several years lots of rave reviews but had to see for myself.  The result .... What a great device!  It went together easily and works better than described.  I brought it to work and took it over to the lab at the college where I work and everyone there is amazed at it's accuracy (especially considering the price).  It compares VERY favorably with our sophisticated laboratory instruments and easily meets AADE's 1% reading comparisons and will be a permanent part of my home shack/bench from now on."

Back to Home Page