On 2-20-2012 20:54, Channel Jumper wrote:

Anyways the one club member that is more involved then the rest in
radio, actually works as a sub contractor for the state - bought one on
a whim.
He figured that for $100.00 he couldn't go wrong.

So Steve bought it and took it home and started to play with it.
He put it on the service monitor and he got out the Part 97 / sub part
15 specifications for a hand held amateur radio and also the book which
came with the radio and the specifications listed.

His radio, on the same service monitor he uses to test state owned
equipment, meets or beats the published report and specifications, along
with the specifications listed by the FCC for a device of this type.



Each and every time this cycle repeats itself, one of two things is
going to happen. Either the ham radio community will come to accept
that this is the way it is going to be and just accept that if they want
to buy a new radio, they are going to have to lower their standards and
buy this piece of crap, or they will have to be willing to pony up more
money to buy a Icom or a Kenwood or a Yaesu.



OK, I'm a bit confused. At the top, you say it meets or beats FCC
technical standards then and at the bottom, you say hams would be
lowering their standards buying this "piece of crap". So why is it
junk? Because it wears down a battery in use? So would a mobile or
base radio running on a car battery...

Scott wrote:

OK, I'm a bit confused. At the top, you say it meets or beats FCC
technical standards then and at the bottom, you say hams would be
lowering their standards buying this "piece of crap". So why is it
junk? Because it wears down a battery in use? So would a mobile or
base radio running on a car battery...

I think he was complaining because the early radios (before Part 90
certification) were not quite compliant on 2m in terms of spurious radiation.
In practice they were ok if you used a resonant antenna.

Once they were "cleaned up" for part 90 certification, they were fine.

This is pretty common with Chinese radios, the CW QRP rig sold by both MFJ
and Ten-Tec were the same way. The original radios sold from China as a
kit and later from Canada via eBay also lacked proper filtering.

The radios were three band, the Ten-Tec version is two band, the MFJ version
is single band. Both have improved filtering and are legal in the US.

Note that several of the Japanese companies are using factories in China,
so the difference between a name brand an unknown brand may be very little.

Bottom line, if you bought them from eBay vendors a year ago, you may have
problems, if you buy them today it should be ok.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(