Chinese HTs may be illegal to import into USA

Some deals are too good to be true.. or legal.
That’s the story with some rather inexpensive HT's being sold on-line.

Amateur Radio Newsline's Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF, has more..

Inexpensive VHF and UHF transceivers made in China that transmit and receive on the 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands appear to be illegal for hams to buy from overseas dealers and have shipped into the United States.

This is because the radios have not passed the FCC certification procedure, nor can they, as they are designed to transmit on frequencies outside of the United States amateur radio allocations right out of the box.

The radios in question bear names like Puxing, FDC, Wouxon, and numerous others. They are being mainly sold on e-Bay and similar on-line auction sites world-wide at prices ranging from $30 to $80 plus shipping. Most of the ads originate from dealers in Taiwan or Hong Kong although some have come from other Pacific Rim nations as well.

According to postings on various chat websites, the radios themselves are not all that bad quality. Not great, but not to shabby. Almost all of them feature a back-lit LCD display, up to 100 memory channels, programmable repeater offsets, and even a built-in CTCSS tone encoder.

Output power on the VHF units approaches 5 watts while the UHF models average around 2 watts out.
Hams using them report that the transmit audio quality ranges from a bit muffled to good depending on the model and manufacturer of the set.

With retail prices far below that of similar radios from Alinco, Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu, hams on this side of the Pacific might find these Chinese built transceivers hard to resist. But as pointed out in on-line postings, the biggest problem aside from it being illegal to import is where to get one fixed if its dropped or stops operating?
Also, replacement battery packs might be very hard to find if the one that comes with the radio goes flat and cannot be revived.

Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF
Amateur Radio Newsline
Los Angeles.

• With all of this taken into account, the radios may not be that great of a bargain after all. Or in the words of the old sage:
Caveat Emptor. Buyer beware.

Source: ARNewsline™