One thing we need to be mindfull of is that we test for poor connections not good! As you say UK great difficulty can be experienced in the field getting an ideal contact. Its most important to have some idea of what readigs you expect from the test you are doing. So many folks just accept anything that the meter says every time without question. As Lyle states in his example the variation can be terific. But by being alert when testing you can usually spot the poor result from bad contact.I carry a couple of resistors in my meter bag just to verify the overal accuracy of my meter if I get a reading I dont believe I check against the known resistor and test again. On a couple of occasions have had leads fracture at the probes causing very odd readings.
