Update: This was delivered on May 2, 2025 in good condition. It took 24 days to get here, 21 of which were sitting in Memphis.
A cautionary tale.
I have purchased and sold several things through Ebay over the years. Most of the time the transactions go smoothly. The item is more or less as described and it arrives in a reasonable time period.
All good.
Recently, I saw this very nice looking Agilent E5061B Vector Network Analyzer. The price was right and it even came with this nice hard case. This is great, I need something like this for an upcoming project.
The only very small, almost too small to notice possible issue was; its in Canada. With all the trade rhetoric going around, I thought, perhaps I should look to buy something from the US. Nah, its fine, after all, it is not coming from China.
Nope.
The order went in, the seller shipped the package, it arrived in Memphis, TN and the trail goes cold after that:
I have emailed and called FedEx several times. They say, “all good, we have all the documentation we need, it will be shipped out shortly.” Last time I called, I spoke to a woman in the Philippines who’s phone cut out with every other word.
It seems probable that all international shipments are stuck in some giant FedEx terminal waiting for someone to say okay or calculate some tariff. The pessimistic view is that it has been stolen. I have lost things in transit.
I should have listened to my little voice. While the problem is not with Ebay itself, importing equipment from another country is problematic. I would advise anyone bidding on Ebay to pay close attention to the location of the item you are purchasing.
In the mean time, I still need to finish my project…
How picky is the requirement for your project?
I have been pretty impressed with the SV4401A, around $400 on Amazon from various sellers.
It is not so finicky as the NanoVNA and other ones like that.
And its results are believable.
Certainly good enough for general troubleshooting and tuning, although I haven’t thought about using it for something like an MOM proof filing.
The main reason for the Agilent unit was the high-power tracking generator. My Siglent unit does pretty good in most situations, however, this is for an AM tower on a class C channel so the Siglent is getting interference. The Siglent output is -5 to 0 dBm, while this one is +10 and I think there is an option for +20 dBm.
I can borrow something.
It does get more complicated with a lot of stuff coming back from an AM tower. I haven’t personally run into that since the technology has kinda shifted from OIB to VNA.
I think Curt Gorman rigged up an external amp for his VNA to deal with something in the New Jersey swamp, but I haven’t worked with him when it was needed.
You can almost imagine a future with 8 or 10 AMs multiplexed on one array in there. Triplexing is too easy.
I thought about a 20 dB amp and an external directional coupler. That would probably work okay, but it is cumbersome.
I think WPAT currently has 3 stations on it’s array, but one of them is non-directional. Even that sounds like more of a challenge than I want to deal with right now.
I would never use FedEx. They are neither federal or express. They lost a body (Yes, they ship bodies.) here in Georgia. Big news story. Did you hear about one of their employee dumping packages in the Alabama woods? Unlike UPS, they are non-union. Revolving door of personnel. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeffrey-merriweather-fed-ex-package_n_62d1852be4b0c842cf56fd2b
Lou, that is truly the worst-case scenario.