Many years ago, while installing a brand new 25W 86MHz trransmitter for the fire service I decided to check the voltages on the backplane.
A slip of the meter probe and there was the magic smoke and a smell of overheated fibreglass pcb. A visual inspection showed no damage, of course not, the power supply tracks were in one of the inner layers of the multi-layer board and the 12V supply track had decided to give up.
Oh well, had to fork out for a new backplane, but luckily no other damage to the expensive kit was caused. Just one of the silly or careless mistakes I have made over the past years.
While a young TV tech. I persuaded the boss the buy one of the first Philips DVMs with red 7-segment display, not a cheap piece of kit. I learnt the hard way that it was better to keep the probes well away from the line output stage. The repair was not cheap.
