Coon or something

[jrc85]

Back to the OP's fencer.

So with no load, you get 5 lights (which I take it is 5,500+ volts on the meter?). But when hooked to the actual hot wire, voltage drops off to 1,000.

We never heard.......what material is being used for the "hot wire"?

Actual wire (aluminum or steel) has very little resistance and little drop off in voltage over long runs. Cheap poly rope and/or tape has light wires and long runs may result in resistance punching the juice through those. But it would take some really long runs to do so. Yet another issue with cheap poly ropes and tapes, you may have a broken wire in the tape or rope and thus the charge is not getting through. To test this, test it all up and down the line. Start at the source and move down it at regular intervals (i.e., 25, 50 or 100 feet) to see if the voltage drops off somewhere. If so, with a tester, you can quickly isolate it down to the exact spot. Once found, you can cut it and splice it back to revive it.

If all that is good, It most likely is not the tester or fence charger. You almost certainly have a short somewhere that is bleeding off the juice.

Aluminum wire test beside charger 2 lights test 2 feet over right past first insulator 1 light

 

[jrc85]

Well my woods are 1 less bandit using the trails that the chicken robber used that night