Building the Ramsey TFM-3 Tri-Field Meter

 

You may have seen the TFM 3 used on some popular ghost hunting shows but what about using it in your own investigations? How sensitive is it? and is it hard to build or should you spend $100 over the kit price for a fully assembled one? The answer is, if you have experience with building circuits, soldering small components, ICs, etc this kit will not be that difficult for you and it's fun to build.

 

I have many hours in electronics work but I have not built anything this complex for probably over fifteen years and I will admit when I opened the box and saw the parts a part of me thought. "Maybe that extra $100 wasn't so bad a price to pay." But then I rolled up my sleeves, dusted off my old soldering iron and got to work. Luckily I have a wife that enjoys many of the same things that I do, so she agreed to help me build the kit.

The first part is laying out your parts and going down the checklist, make sure everything is there before you start. The instructions are broken into around 70 steps. The first part is building part of the electric sensor, be sure you observe proper polarity on all components especially the two diodes and the hall sensors. When you get to that part make sure you place those sensors as level as possible, get it right this will insure maximum sensitivity.

Ok four hours just seems to fly by when your soldering, checking, and rechecking your work and making sure your solder connections are up to Par after a decade of inactivity. Actually it doesn't, it seems like it goes on forever and as fun as it was to build this kit, and it was fun, there was nothing more rewarding than soldering in that final resistor. Because we did go so slow and check our work after each component I was sure the device would work. All that we had to do next was put the battery compartment in, solder on the antennae leads and seal the case for testing.

Shortly after midnight the power switch was flipped on and the LEDS blinked to life for the first time. We ran down the check list and followed the test procedures repeating every step until the unit was in our opinion functioning properly. After you complete the project switching the unit to the electric setting will cause the red LED array at the top to sweep forward but only half this array will light, there is nothing wrong so do not worry about that.

The TFM3 is a "Tri-Filed" meter which means it has 3 separate sensors in it. Unlike our Natural Tri-Field meters the TFM3 will detect both AC and DC fields. It is not as discriminating and will pick up on a broader range of frequency's. The next mode is the Magnetic setting which the TFM3 detects with those hall sensors we talked about earlier. If you got those guys placed perfectly level and in line with each other the sensing ability of the TFM3 will be pretty good. In fact the device is capable of sensing even the earths weak magnetic field. The last mode you have on the device is the RF mode which makes the unit act like a EMF detector.

In my opinion the TFM3s best feature is electrostatic, ion detection. The unit is far to sensitive to carry around and it's primary use like the K-2 meter is as an EVP validation instrument. It has the ability of having a more sensitive range than the K-2 and as such has the potential to react during EVP sessions and provide a validation of an event.

Well that's it, if you want to buy one and are afraid you will not be able to assemble it you now know what your up against. If you can build circuits and enjoy it, I say go for it. This is a FUN kit and a great experience for any hobbyist! Besides, if you know you can't build one you can always buy a pre-built one from a secondary source.

 

 

 

Good hunting,
Ron