My first Volt-Ohm-Meter, the ArcherKit Multimeter Model 28-4012A, sold by Radio Shack

The year was 1983, and I had just finished reading "Getting Started in Electronics" by author Forrest M Mims III, which was a publication distributed through Radio Shack stores. I was ready to get my hands dirty in building the 100 electronic projects at the end of this book and I needed a basic Volt-Ohm-Meter to troubleshoot the circuits I built on my trusty breadboard.

At the time I didn't have a lot of money as my only employment  at age 13 was a paper route.

Radio Shack offered two choices in my price range. The already assembled Micronta 1000 Ohm/Volt Multimeter or the kit form ArcherKit Multimeter Model 28-4012A. Operation wise,  both multimeters were identical but just had some cosmetic differences. The Micronta had a black case with "Micronta" silk screened on the meter face while the ArcherKit had a light blue case with the meter face emblazoned with "ArcherKit".

Being cost conscious, I chose the ArcherKit Multimeter Kit because it was several dollars cheaper than the Micronta and, besides, I needed to work on my soldering skills!

Assembly of the ArcherKit Multimeter Kit was fairly straight forward. You had to solder all of the required electronic components in place and install wire jumpers over to the built in battery holder. The only difficult part I remember was using the solder iron to melt plastic posts used to secure metal contacts, where the test leads are to be connected, to the back side of the multimeter face. Too much heat and you could melt through the front cover of the multimeter face from the back side! 

The ArcherKit Multimeter Model 28-4012A was just what I needed. While it could be laborious  to keep inserting test leads into different meter face sockets to change between Voltage Ranges, AC, DC, and Ohms settings, most of my troubleshooting was done in the 15Volt Range in DC measurement mode so this was not an issue.  

I imagine many people at one time owned the ArcherKit Multimeter Model 28-4012A when getting started in Electronics. It had served me well for many years until I graduated to a fancy auto-ranging  Digital LCD Multimeter. Even now my  ArcherKit Multimeter has its place in my toolkit for when I need to take some very basic voltage measurements.