[IsquaredR]

Thank you, MrBungle. And Frank I appreciate your information. Stuarth: How coincidental that you offered your posting and I am grateful for it. It probably sounds silly but last night as I was falling asleep I was weighing the options of where to locate the ground clip. I can make an argument for placing it on any side so the conundrum was where would it be most convenient? It is of minimal importance but one thing that is sometimes annoying about probe ground clips is that they get tangled-up while hanging in storage. Ironically I've been considering just putting a small jack on the side and using a removable ground clip. After reading your posting I think this would certainly be the way to go. It was also offer a "plus" because I could remove it for storage and vary it in length as my projects might require. So thanks for your guidance.

In a private message Dave G4EBT mused that if he were to build one again he would have used a bigger box because a small one became "fiddly." I'm with you, Dave. It was difficult to put it all together and make the logistics work out in my undersized box. I also was unable to use my metal box as the negative return because I feared hand capacity might affect sensing. So I also needed to fashion a probe tip and a BNC connector mounting that was insulated from the metal box. In his article, Mr. Haig recommended a plastic box but I did not have one on hand.

So I'm going to go with a jack on the side for a ground return and will post results here after I do some actual testing on a live circuit.

Thanks to all who have taken the time to make suggestions, provide information and lend a hand.