Unusual Capacitor Meter

A direct-reading capacitance meter 

The instrument described here evolved from a bench lashup used for measuring small values of capacitance. The original circuit used a cross-coupled multivibrator to provide the required square wave. Thehe present circuit was developed to avoid complicated switching and to minimize the number of parts.

The meter has six ranges. The lowest is 0-10 pF; the highest is 0-1  uF. The scale is linear, and if the timing capacitors are chosen carefully, the meter should have at least 5 percent accuracy. 

This is better than the tolerance on many capacitors around your station between 1-100 pF.