[Towertalk] RD1800

[KI7WX@aol.com]

Craig does have a winner on his hands. Nice rotator and well worth a look for folks that are tired of rebuilding T2X's.

1) A note about installation. The RD1800 is a cylinder shape and there is no easy way to grip it for hauling up the tower. In the first one I had hands on, the rotor came with a screw eye that is inserted into the top of the rotor. That eye lets you attach your pull rope to the rotor to haul it up. Looked like a good idea.

Be aware that when items are hauled up a tower on a rope they will often rotate. If a screw-eye attachment point rotates the wrong way you might find a rotor dropping away from your haul rope at ~9.9 m/s^2.

2) On N6RO's initial RD1800 we had a problem with a little nylon gear that drives the indicator potentiometer slipping on it's shaft. When that gear slips the rotor still rotates, but you don't see any evidence of it on the indicator box. Craig is going to change that design, but if your rotor has this little gear simply press fit to the shaft (intial design), you might want to modify it before installation. We used some super glue to fix Ken's on the tower and so far that's held, but I doubt that it'll be a permanent fix.

3) For use in side mount applications - the footprint of the RD1800 is a bit wider than the M2-Orion, T2X, and Yaesu rotors. On some swinging gate type antenna mounts the rotor won't fit properly and you'll need to make some spacer blocks to get everything to fit. 

Such is life with rotors...I'd still buy the RD1800 in a heartbeat and am looking forward to seeing how they hold up in use.

Mark
KI7WX