On 9/12/2017 5:58 AM, GandalfG8--- via time-nuts wrote:

Nigel / David,

Sorry to hear of your "bargain".   However I doubt very much that the
lamp was made by R&S themselves, like with the Racal 9475 unit it was
probably sourced either as a module or as parts from someone like
Efratom and one of those lamps will be found to fit. I'm not in a
position to help much at present (just coming out of Chemo).  My Racal
which was in a similar or worse state when I got that, now comes to life
when needed.

Cheers,
Dan

Its an unrealistic expectation that equipment from the well known auction site will work and be 'in-cal'

Its realistic to anticipate several the purchase cost to get well priced instruments back 'in-cal'. But hey if i spend 2 k on a sweeper 3 k to fix and cal it and BlahTest is charging 10k for a ready to go unit im Still 5 k ahead of the game

Content by Scott
Typos by Siri

Experience has shown me that you can reasonably purchase good, working test
equipment that's well within calibration tolerances if you are buying the
more 'common' equipment, 6.5 digit meters, frequency counters, even a
Stanford SR620...

I've been very lucky with those, two spectrum analysers and various other
bits of test gear I'd never have been able to afford any other way, saving
thousands over what even tatty examples from equipment brokers would have
cost.

Yes, you can get bitten and buy a complete POS but you can also take
sensible precautions and get bargains.

On 14 Sep 2017 18:01, "Scott McGrath" scmcgrath@gmail.com wrote:

I second Clint’s statement, most of the test equipment I’ve brought have worked on switch on. I did buy a R&S CRTU with no LCD display and paid £400 for something which didn’t work I had a lot of deep thoughts. It turns out  CRTU was only nine years old and two months out of calibration, the issue was an LCD back light anyway it still used using a separate display -hence the price.

I often look at the equipment brokers pieces than decide to return to the ‘auction site and take the risk, I’ve only had a couple of issues and I always had my money returned

73’s

Mike G4WYZ

Precisely my point,  But when purchasing i expect to pay for a calibration at a minimum.

Helps to make friends with the local cal lab though as frequently far better pricing can be negotiated if you can get your instruments done on a  non-critical basis as most of the business of a lab is time sensitive but like any other business they have slow periods.

So your turnaround might be 3-4 weeks instead of 72 hours but the price is half of the 72 hour turn

I almost always buy equipment that isn't working. It's fixing it that makes
it interesting. What would I do with all the testgear if I didn't use it to
fix the next bit ?

On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 9:34 AM, Michael Prescott MSc <
mike_prescott@hotmail.com> wrote:

I do enjoy the 'chase' of repairing things other people have discarded as
beyond economic repair, my CMU200 came with a rather amusing fault as well
as a good example of poor industrial design choice, it's now a very useful
piece of equipment.

I often scrounge faulty electronic equipment just for the fun of the
repair.

If I were buying test gear for a professional lab then I'd buy with
warranty and cal but for my use I prefer the 'mystery'

On 16 Sep 2017 08:25, "Adrian Godwin" artgodwin@gmail.com wrote:

On 15 Sep 2017 10:45, "Scott McGrath" scmcgrath@gmail.com wrote:

calibration at a minimum.

I have on occasions requested sellers to send an item to the manufacturer
(Agilent or Keysight) for calibration before shipping it to me, offering
to pay the calibration cost, but stating that I expect a full refund if the
item fails the calibration.

If a test equipment dealer is confident that something is working well,
they should not object to sending it to the manufacturer for calibration,
as long as the buyer is willing to pay.

Of course if a seller knows little about something,  they are not going to
do this,  but the item should be appropriately priced.

One UK seller (grace1403) declined to send an Agilent N9912A FieldFox to
Agilent, because "Agilent were too fussy"., failing items for trivual
issues.  But he did agree to send it to one of the cal labs he uses. I
thought it was a waste of time going to one of the less fussy outfits,  but
bought it anyway. It was then clear on receipt that it was faulty. (The
spectrum analyser functionality was ok, but it didn't work as a network
analyzer).  He took it back,  but then advertised it on eBay 6 months
later. When asked, he said nothing had been done to it.

eBay rules about who pays the return shipping charge for an item that is
"not as described' keep changing, and may be different on different sites.
But on a heavy item shipped internationally,  the postage cost can be
comparable or exceed the calibration cost.

Dave.