You know... to speak the plain truth... I feel that I was lucky with mine.

I bought it at a hamfest here in the Houston area....but I bought it in the "tailgate" area outside the main building.
I didn't know a SINGLE thing about spectrum analyzers.... other than..... it didn't seem like I could beat it.... for the price of $130.

It was after I got home and started studying that I discovered how easy they are to damage AND HOW EASILY it could have BEEN damaged when I bought it.

So either luck was with me, or the many was decent.... I'd kind of like to think BOTH!!!! As it worked fine when I got around to trying it out.

I didn't know about building a little "coily pickup" non-contact probe until somewhat later.... and it took me a while to understand EXACTLY how the "care and feeding" of an SA worked. I had to get comfortable with the concept of dB and dBm and just HOW both attenuation AND proper power dissipation had to work together....to provide a 0 dBm (and NO MORE than +10 dBm!) signal .....and THEN built the -40 dBm sampler that I built.

I definitely have enjoyed having it on the bench though. Perhaps I am foolish....but I tend to lean towards being a "clean air / clean modulation" nut and have already taken the CB that I had on my desk "out of service" after seeing IT on the SA. HORRIBLE .... HORRIBLE modulation harmonics present in the signal!!!!

Again, as I eventually "close in" on retirement... I have a stack of radios of my own here... that I want to evaluate, repair, align and HOPEFULLY make them work as well or better than they ever did.

Again too, I wish you luck in getting yours going. Do keep me in mind and let me know how it goes for you.