OK now that I have read it again......and again......I am thinking they left out a ground. I;m guessing the meter lights use a single power wire and simply connect to the chassis on the other side. Sounds like that jack should have been connected to chassis ground. Both + and - wires from the jack go to the circuit board I am guessing. Crap like this is hard to solve unless you have hands on then sometimes five minutes and a multimeter will solve it.
Yes, exactly, except, the lights used to work without any coax being connected. I didn't tear the meter apart to actually check the lighting grounding source. I just happened to notice that while changing a jumper one day, the lights went out. Screwing the new jumper in place returned the lights. I didn't think it was a good idea to use the antenna shield as a DC ground, so just decided to ground the case with a jumper. I'm still scratching my head over the whole thing.
