Steve,     I run the same antennas here, maybe something I do to my rotors make a difference.   I clean and grease them with a marine grease, the old wire on the slider style pots have been replaced with the newer style closed back ones, I added thermal switches to the inside of the motors so if something snags they shutoff rather than burn up, an interesting note is that it looks like Yaesu had planned for a cutout as the pc board inside the motor has a spot where you move one wire and then there are two holes that line up perfectly with a spot to slip the cutout into the motor and solder to the board, I also Loctite the drive screws.

For me when they do finally fail it is the pot that gets erratic, a new pot and re-grease and away they go.

If yours were dying every 4-8 months I can see where spending the bucks for the Spid makes perfect sense, It's also possible you guys track way more sats than I do, with AO-92 going dark I only track 4 sats on a daily basis now.

73, Kevin WA7FWF

On 10/6/2020 1:29 PM, Stephen E. Belter wrote:

Kevin,

I'm in West Lafayette, Indiana, so no salt water. My antennas are M-squared medium size antennas, 2MCP14 and 436CP30 with polarity switches, so not overloaded.

Mark N8MH, has had similar experience with his Yaesu's. Since he is a dedicated telemetry collector like you, and since he is a control operator for the Fox satellites, he replaces his rotors when they fail. He had a volunteer to repair his broken rotors, so I transported 6-8 rotors from his garage in North Carolina (not near salt water either) to Indiana. Half were elevation rotors, half were azimuth rotors. I thought I was just having bad luck until Mark shared his experience.

The last time mine failed, it was the azimuth rotor. Pointing the Yagis south just above the horizon worked a little better (long term) than an omnidirectional antenna. Since it failed while I was on a 3 month trip, I couldn't replace the rotor.

I still recommend the G5500 rotors for normal operators, but they may not be the best choice for 24x7x365 telemetry collection. (I'm glad they work for you in that mode.) I've since switched to an AlphaSpid rotor with a Green Heron controller. You can buy the AlphaSpid rotors without the controller (my recommendation for heavy duty use) and use a Green Heron instead.

Still: YMMV

73, Steve N9IP