Double_E Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Posted this recently in another thread (different forum), in response to someone's query about buying used beacons. Figured I'd post it here too. Anecdote... A couple months ago, a coworker loaned me his beacon while he was out of town so that I could loan it to a friend so that me & friend could go skiing. Well, about 16 hours after the ski trip ended, I realized that the beacon was still on, in receive mode. I wondered if this was a bad thing, so I checked the manual, which said that (ulp) the Ortovox M2 has a "working life" of 300 hours in transmit mode and 40 hours in receive mode. So I called a couple stores, who confirmed my suspicion that this had, in effect, used up almost 1/2 of the "working life" of the beacon. I felt like shit and told the coworker about it, and offered to pay him some $$ towards a new beacon. He thanked me but said it wouldn't be necessary (he makes way more than me -- probably 2x -- so he didn't care much about it). Anyway so the lessons I took from this were... 1) always make sure yer damn beacon is turned off when you don't need it!!!! 2) don't loan out yer beacon, unless you're sure the person is someone who'd tell you if something went wrong with it 3) don't rent (or buy used) beacons discuss. I guess another thing, almost implied, is: "4) make sure your ski buddies' beacons were not rented or bought used".... but I realize that's not entirely realistic. Quote
cj001f Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Yeah that's working lifetime with a pair of fresh batteries, i.e. how long you can leave it on before it runs out of juice. Specified minimum for all beacons is 200hrs of transmit time per set of batteries. If they really had a 300hr lifetime many ski patrollers would go through a new beacon every month. Quote
JayB Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 So Double_E, uh, are you the author of that particular anecdote, or is someone else responsible for that little misunderstanding? I'd hate to borrow that guy's car. Use 1/2 tank of gas and he'd be hysterical. "WTF! You just used HALF THE WORKING LIFE of my vehicle!!!!!!! Sorry, but you owe me $10,000...." Quote
Double_E Posted January 31, 2006 Author Posted January 31, 2006 Yeah, I was just a tad skeptical of the "working life" thing (figured it's probably like the expiration date on bottle of aspirin) ..... and of what they guys in store told me (of course they're gonna tell you that you gotta buy a new beacon!!)...But I still felt I should tell the guy what happened. And felt like I learned a couple lessons from it all. Quote
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