Are your fingers touching the probes?
Is it a good $200 meter or a cheaper $40 meter.

Unless you can see leakage I'd not worry about it.
If your battery tray is metal like a car and it measures differently when
you remove the battery from the tray, then you may have a leak somewhere.

David
"Charles T. Low" wrote in message
...
Thanks, David (and Wayne),

This phenomonen occurred even after I disconnected all the leads, neg and
pos, both batteries.

So: capacitance from what?

Charles

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Charles T. Low
- remove "UN"
www.boatdocking.com
www.ctlow.ca/Trojan26 - my boat

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"David Ditch" wrote in message
...
I'm no battery expert but I'm an electrical Engineer.
What you saw I think is capacitance.
Did you have the positives both hooked up to any sort of battery switch
or
some other device?
Were the negatives still disconnected?
That could explain that.

Typically, when I'm working with electronics boards, a voltage
measurement
that starts high then drops is due to a discharge of a capacitor. A volt
meter has a resistance to it (usually pretty high for a digital meter).
Likewise, if you are measuring resistance, the meter is putting out a
voltage, so capacitance will affect any resistance measurement.

Thats my 2cents worth.

David