When taking a list to F/Ning assessment an auditor must know how to read through an F/N.
This is a skill that, up to this point, has been used routinely only by highly trained auditors or a few very sharp Class IIIs or IVs or above. But with the difficulty auditors have had in F/Ning prepared lists, it becomes obvious that, from Class III on up, all auditors should be trained to read the meter through an F/N.
It is the answer to almost any difficulty an auditor has had in taking a list to F/Ning assessment.
An F/N speeds up or slows down or does different things while still remaining an F/N and one can read through it.
It is done like this: The swinging weight of the needle (F/Ning from an earlier item) has momentum and it will tend to obscure the read on another item. It will almost obscure it, but not quite. You’ll see the F/N “check” or slow up briefly and then continue and this means you have a hot item. Any item that would cause an F/N to “check” will be hot. The auditor who can read through an F/N will spot this and handle the item then and there. Then he continues on down the list, missing nothing, handling what is there to be handled and, with this skilled metering, takes it to a genuinely F/Ning list on assessment. And it doesn’t take days or even several sessions, necessarily, to do it.
If an auditor can’t read through an F/N he’ll miss this. He’s going down the list, the F/N “checks” or slows and he doesn’t see it so he goes right on by it. Then, within the next couple of items the F/N kills. He’s going to have a hard time F/Ning that list because he’s now got a suppressed read.
Example:
Auditor in assessing starts with an F/N which continues as he goes on down the list calling the items. On, say, item 5 the F/N “checks” or slows briefly. Auditor can’t read through an F/N so he misses this and goes on by. On about the 6th or 7th item the F/N packs up, and the auditor is in a quandary because the F/N has turned off but he didn’t get a read on items 6 or 7 either. Or he may misduplicate the killed F/N as a read on items 6 or 7 and attempt to take up one or the other of them. Either way he’s in for trouble because he’s missed the actual item and he may even try to handle a wrong item. He’s going to find it difficult to take that list to an F/Ning assessment.
The correct action when an F/N packs up this way is to go back up the list and reassess the last several items to find the missed read. But one should be able to read through an F/N.
Probably the main reason for pc upset or protest against “overrepair” and being handled again and again with repair lists lies in this factor alone — the auditor can’t read through an F/N. Thus he misses the charged items and takes up items that are uncharged. And the repair goes on interminably, as the charged lines are not found and handled.
This is also probably the reason that auditors have been known to back off from having to F/N a list. They “know” from experience that it is a laborious business.
The truth is it’s not necessary for an auditor to labor over taking a list to F/Ning assessment. It simply requires good TRs and skilled metering, including the ability to read through F/Ns.
An auditor can be trained to see a read through an F/N. The drill would be to sit him down in front of a meter with an F/Ning student on the cans and assess the prepared lists in The Book of E-Meter Drills, spotting each time he gets a “check” or a “slow” or any change in an otherwise continuing F/N. He’ll find that he can read through an F/N and become very adept at this, and from then on he won’t miss.
You’ll have an auditor who is confident of his ability to F/N a list accurately and thoroughly in one-half the time (and trauma) it would take otherwise.
And far fewer “overrepaired” pcs. (“Overrepaired” pcs are usually pcs with actual reads missed and false reads taken up. So “overrepair” is really “misrepaired” or “not repaired.”)
This is metering at its best and most accurate. We now expect the best and most accurate metering from the auditor who is in the business of F/Ning prepared lists.