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Re: [TowerTalk] Yaesu G-2800 rotor pricing question

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Yaesu G-2800 rotor pricing question
From: jimlux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2020 16:38:35 -0800
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
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.

Any advice would be appreciated.
(this is not an offer to sell them)

73, Jim
K0MHC
Kerrville, TX




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