Review: Peak LCR45 LCR and impedance meter

[@timothydavy968]

Purchased a PeakLCR 40 many years ago,next to my dmm my most useful piece of test equipment, still working and accurate

[@johnwest7993]

I could have really used this when I was building my 170 kHz transmit antenna. The capacitance and inductance of the helically wound vertical, the top-hat, and the loading coil were completely different than my calculations, and really threw off the resonant frequency of my antenna, leaving my up on a ladder on a hot, sunny day with a portable scope attempting to retune my antenna. A good hand-held LCR and impedance meter would have been worth its weight in gold to analyze everything before it was all assembled.

[@tonyd1149]

Dear VK3YE, thank you for making and posting this video. (Excellent suggestions, about use of such an impedance meter to test/learn various configurations of capacitors/inductors. Thank you for showing the use and functions of this meter).

[@FlurinKoenz]

Hi Peter, thanks for your videos and books! Would you still recommend this device or did better meters appear in this price class. Kind Regards, Flurin

[@vk3ye]

I can't comment on newer products but this unit continues to provide good service for me.

[@bmamps3937]

At 12:04 the ESR of the capacitor is shown as over 200 ohms. That is absurd at it's likely less than 1 ohm. It would have been instructive to test using an electrolytic where the complex are real parts are comparable, perhaps adding known series resistance to see how good it really is.

[@chrishulbert9571]

Dear Peter VK3YE, I have recently purchased a LCR45 and wonder if I can safely use it to get a estimate of the impedance of a vertical wire length of about 5m (against ground) to then construct an impedance transformer (50 ohms to the measured impedance) to make an impedance transformer for an EFHW for the 10m band? 1:64 or 1:49 ratio transformers are suggested with the usual impedance range said to be between 1800 to 5000 ohms. The manual says the LCR45 will measure resistance to 2Mega Ohms. I realise that it would be best to short the wire to ground before measuring to protect the meter from damage by high electrostatic voltages. The measuring frequency will be only 200kHz while the antenna will obviously need to function at about 29MHz but it would be a start............I have not tried a nanoVNA to attempt to measure the input impedance of the 5m wire but again it is said that the impedance is too high to get a useful reading? Your comments would be appreciated. Thanks Chris m0pzc

[@vk3ye]

The LCR-45 is completely unsuitable for this application. You must have a Nano VNA or similar that covers the frequency range you want to make measurements for.

[@chrishulbert9571]

Thanks for the reply Peter. It is now obvious that the impedance value will depend on the frequency applied at the wire (antenna) input by the measuring instrument! However a MFJ antenna analyser although it will apply a frequency of 29MHz will only measure up to an impedance of 650 ohms so I suppose that I will have to build a transformer to reduce the value below 650 ohms and then back calculate what the true value was from the turns ratios? Then wind a transformer to match 50 ohms to the calculated impedance. After that a nanoVNA will be helpful to visually tune the circuit with a variable capacitor in parallel to get rid of any excess inductive reactance from the windings on the toroid. Any other comments? Chris m0pzc

[@johnwest7993]

I wouldn't bother to try to measure capacitances under a couple of pF. Almost everything will affect such a tiny value. I just experiment with a cap in the circuit to see if it works OK, or I make a gimmick and play with it till the circuit does what I want.

[@danielkonkol7541]

Anyone try measuring around 100nF film capacitors with this LCR45 meter? The impedance measurement on my recently purchased meter shows quite an unstable reading for the real (resistive) value, it will change value from low milliohms and goes up to over +2Ω. Sometimes it goes down below 0 to -ve values around -1.3Ω. The reactive value is stable at -j1.605kΩ. The meter is set to Automatic mode and selects 1kHz as the test frequency which falls well within its test range according to the graph on page 16 of the User Guide. I'm interested to know if all the meters are like this or if it's just mine?

[@BleepingBeep]

A few words about the calibration/recalibration requirements would have been useful. Otherwise, a good review. --AA6KI

[@NICKGAR7]

Nice review. Thanks de Nick M1DDD

[@parkashjagirsonari6989]

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