parker183•23d agoProlific Poster

TIL the hard way that refurbished test equipment can be a total money pit

Bought a refurbished spectrum analyzer off eBay for $850 back in March for a side job troubleshooting some comm gear on a King Air. Figured I was saving like $400 over a new one. Thing worked okay for about two weeks then started giving me false readings on the 2.4GHz band. Spent another 3 hours chasing a problem that didnt even exist because the unit was drifting. Called the seller and they said tough luck, no returns after 30 days. Took it to a proper cal shop in Phoenix and they quoted me $600 to fix it. So now I'm out the original cash plus an extra $300 for a guy to look at it and tell me the board is shot. Has anyone else gotten burned buying used avionics test gear from random online sellers or am I the only sucker?

3 comments

3 Comments

joel_hall1720d ago

Wait just a small thing about that King Air comment. Most King Airs don't have anything running on 2.4GHz avionics wise, their comm gear is VHF and UHF bands like 118-137MHz and 225-400MHz. You might have been trying to measure something like a WiFi router or a Bluetooth dongle in the cabin, which would explain why the false readings were on that specific band. Those cheap analyzers drift like crazy on the higher frequencies too, so chasing a nonexistent glitch on 2.4GHz was basically guaranteed to waste your time. Sucks you got stuck with that bill though, buying a used unit without checking its cal history is always a gamble.

xenaf5123d ago

Tbh I bought a "tested working" signal generator and it just hummed at me.

val_williams22d ago

Tested working" usually means someone plugged it in, heard nothing, and called it good.