[amsat-bb] Re: 5500 rotor problem

[Jeff Welsh]

Jeff,

I burned up my 5400 azimuth motor twice while I had it and it was fairly
easy to disassemble the rotor housing and the motor casing.
The motors in the 5500 are very similar to those in the 5400 I used to have.
The only difference I noticed was the diameter of the motor shaft.

I had found the PCB leads on the back of the motor were completely fried and
blackened as well as the insulation on the leads were melted. With some
creativity one can repair it. If I remember correctly, a replacement 5500
motor from Yaesu was in the $130 price range and it only took be about 30
minutes to replace it.

The trickiest part was disassembling the rotor in such a way that the
bearings don't fall out. :)

Hope that offers some insight.

--jeff
N3QO


 On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 7:09 AM, Jeff KB2M <kb2m at comcast.net> wrote:

>  Starting to put my satellite system back on the air. Now having another
> rotor problem. I think what happened is that after Hurricane Irene passed
> by, everything was working. Later that morning a surprisingly strong wind
> gust after Irene passed by blew my sat array over. I was unaware of this
> and
> when I tried to work a sat I had a very weak signal. I went outside to
> check
> the antenna system and found it laying on the ground. So what I think
> happened is that the rotor was trying to turn while the antenna was on the
> ground and burned out something in the rotor. It is not a cable problem, it
> is definitely in the azimuth rotor, elevation works fine. I swap cables and
> this showed the problem is in the az rotor only. Anyone have this same
> problem? I'm going to take the rotor apart this weekend and would like some
> ideas before I start. Any electrical test through the cable from inside the
> shack to determine the problem would be much appreciated :-)
>
> 73 Jeff kb2m
>
>
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