meter jumping

[cdsmith46]

No it's not the same as shark jumping... as I hunt, my meter has learned to slowly move itself up. It goes from 180 to 181 and sometimes as far as 184, all without my touching it. The knob on the back seems reasonably tight, but still the creep. I have to check it every few minutes using a quarter to see if I'm still in range. Any quick and dirty suggestions (for the meter, dummy)?

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Does it ever stabilize?
You see this most with a 550 meter. Not so much with a 180.
Temperature and battery voltage are the usual culprits. Once the temp of the detector and meter have stabilized the meter gets solid as long as temp is steady and you are not moving between sun/shade.
At turn on the battery will initially provide a bit more voltage than it does once it has run a few minutes. This affects the meter's power supply voltage.
You could expect alkaline batteries to do this also because they steadily run down in voltage as opposed to the long relatively flat operating range of rechargeables.
Another possibility....humidity.
The meter is composed of a high impedance circuit. If any moisture is condensing on the board it acts as a high resistance short and will throw off the calibration.

I use 550 meters. They drift a couple digits in the first few minutes, but after that usually drift only one digit. Most of the time this is close enough. If it seems to have drifted up or down one, then I just allow for it and don't bother to recalibrate.

HH

 

[Sand Scoop]

My meter was jumping around but even more radically. I unscrewed the connections and re-tightened. That cured the problem.Somewhere it wasn't making a good contact.