Amateur Radio Dealers

Ed attended the meeting, and sent me this report:

At their session testing Chinese radios, the Wellington club ran a contest and awarded prizes for the radio with the best specs. About ten showed up, many with three or four radios, mostly Wouxun and Baofeng. Everyone got to test one radio. Larry, KS4NB, who ran the meeting also favorably reviewed a couple of Quad band radios that look good for a Tech that wanted to work 10 through 70 cm:

On the question of buying a radio from Amazon, they seemed to be in favor of paying the extra dollars due to the ease of returns and the free shipping with Prime. Several had a difficult time with restocking fees and a lot of questions about why they were returning the radio from amateur radio dealers. Apparently, the close margin of profit is related to the dealer experience. I for one like the lower prices and sales support available from most amateur radio stores.

The Wellington Radio Club does a nice job with interesting programs under the leadership of Larry, KS4NB.

I think this would make a great club program, if one of the members has access to a service monitor or spectrum analyzer. There’s obviously a lot of interest in these Chinese radios. People are buying them, and with the economy in China slowing down, we can expect the prices to continue to be very low.