Chuck K9LC
-------- Original message --------
From: jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date: 3/2/20 6:38 PM (GMT-06:00)
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Yaesu G-2800 rotor pricing question
On 3/2/20 3:17 PM, Jim Froemke wrote:
> I’ve asked before but, here we go again.
> I’ve two rotors from an estate and I’m confused as to how to price
them for
> sale.
Certainly no more than half the new price.
Think of these in terms of:
1) what was the original warranty (I assume you're selling as-is)
2) What is the design life? What's the wear out component and how much
of its life is left?
This is kind of tricky - there are plenty of electric motors out there
that are 100 years old and still working - but that doesn't mean that
they were designed to last that long - you might have gotten lucky, or
the loads were low, etc.
In the case of used gear you don't really know the history - sure, the
ham selling it to you (if alive) will say that it was never abused, but
oh yeah, there was that wind storm 10 years ago which bent a bunch of
the elements on his antenna. Nobody has *real* usage data (like you
would with a regularly monitored mechanical system).
I would think that the wear out parts are things like bearings, seals,
feedback pots, etc. What affects its wearout? temperature, ice, water,
mechanical loads. These are all hard to estimate. It's not like a car
engine, where you've got X hours of running at Y RPM, against a rated
bearing life of Z hours.
I would assume, without other information, that the useful life of
something like this is 10-15 years - I can't imagine a company
*designing* for a 20 year life for a piece of consumer gear. Therefore,
the 15 year old one is basically at "scrap value" - what are the parts
inside worth if someone wanted to use it to fix something else, or if
they were going to sell it as scrap metal. If someone happened to need
the control box, or the connectors on the cables, it might be worth a
bit more *to that one person*.
The 2 year old one that's been outside, but not operated? A lot would
depend on the environment, and what the seals are like. It's probably
not "worn out", but if something sits, unmoving, through rain, ice, sun
beating on it, etc., it might have developed leaks, or the elastomers
have gotten stiff.
It's not under warranty. Maybe half the new price if *everything* is
like new and there's no obvious damage.
At some point, too, you've got to decide if shipping 40-50 lbs is worth
it. Shipping UPS for something that size is about $75-80 depending on
where it's going.
There are few if any recent examples on the usual swap forums and I’d
> like to sell them locally (they’re very heavy).
>
> - The first is a used G-2800 SDX rotor and controller. Nothing
special other
> than its fully functional with all parts included. It had been
mounted on a
> tower for 15 years rotating a VHF stack (6, 2, 1.25 and 0.7-meter yagis).
>
> - The second is a relatively new (1 ½ years old) G-2800 DXA rotor,
> controller and tower shock absolver. The controller has the optional
> remote-control interface installed. It had been mounted on the tower but,
> the owner passed away before the full VHF array could be assembled. It’s
> also fully functional with all parts included.
>