I was looking for a capacitance and inductance meter or bridge and found one at a Ham flea market. It was made by Almost All Digital Electronics. At the time I was unaware of the company and the ham that sold the meter to me did not know anything about it and was selling it for someone else. The price seemed reasonable and if it didn’t work or had poor accuracy I wouldn’t be out to much.
When I had an opportunity to try it out I was very surprised as to how well it worked especially on low value capacitors. The unit is capable of compensating for lead capacity with a push of a button and gave accurate reading on capacitors with values of less than 20 picofarads. I have an assortment of 1% mica capacitors and they all read within 1% on this meter. On a good day this particular meter will read up to about 0.5 microfarad. The meter cannot read polarized capacitors.
Their website, http://www.aade.com/lcm2binst/LC2Binst.htm (NOTE) indicates that they have a "B" version of this meter available now. I did not notice any difference in the features between the two but apparently the "B" version can read to at least 1 mf. There is an easy way to extend the range of the capacitance readings. All that needs to be done is measure 2 capacitors in series, one of known value and the one you want to measure and do the calculations. I installed a stable reference capacitor on a small piece of perforated board with a banana plug directly attached to the board and also included a short jumper with an alligator clip. The board is then plugged into the L/C Meter II. I put the formula in a programmable calculator. It is quite convenient to determine the actual value this way. I also made up a small spreadsheet in XL format, shown below, that is not as convenient to use. You can save it by left clicking here. It should be correct but I do not guarantee the accuracy.
I did not have any precision inductors or a large selection of inductors to check on the meter. The meter appeared to work fine with the selection I had on hand.
Nice L/C meter for Ham use.
NOTE: This link is no longer valid.