In a nutshell: the article writes about an OM that ordered 3 “chinese” radios. The customs autorities noticed the CE sign was to small, the CE document was not signed the radios did not comply with the regulations and the limits for the signals in 2m and 70cm bands. (Sorry that my english is not good enough to translate this more detailed)
But it seems he was lucky - instead of a CHF 1320 he just had to pay a fee of 440 CHF.
As a hamradio novice I really fear this. How can you know where it is save to order equipment?
Sabrina, it’s difficult when you are newbie. A few simple rules help when you are learning about products and vendors.
You can have cheap goods, you can have quality goods, you can have Chinese goods but you can’t have cheap, quality Chinese goods. The Chinese manufacture some extremely high quality goods for Apple amongst others. When the price is very cheap, it is very cheap for a reason.
Within reason, you get what you pay for. Until you know better, buy reputable brands from real dealers. You pay more but you probably get what you expected.
You are right Andrew. But for day to day non-stop excellence in utter garbage they are the champions. There is such a non stop tide of complete and utter junk that the middle ground has been decimated. Take hand tools, there used to rubbish tools made from metal with the hardness of cheese / bananas, then were tools for the amateur market which were not too cheap nor too expensive and for amateur use, would do fine. Then there were things like Snap-on. Expensive but serious quality. The continuous race to the bottom means there is now utter garbage or seriously expensive.
I want a new expander watch strap for an old watch. There used to be a vast choice at various quality points. But the race for cheap and the fact that people buy it means I can buy a cheap gold expander strap that will turn my wrist green in a few days and then fail or pay several hundred pounds for a gold one. There’s nothing in between.
True, the people selling mid-market goods would still be there if the customers had not been lemming like in only buying the cheapest in their avarice. Now we have no choice, it’s either junk or high end and no middle ground.
That’s OK provided that they shipped a protected cell. I got one similar and the battery provided was (or at least is labelled as) a Nitecore NL186 and it says:
Connecting it to 5V USB should be fine. Mine also came with a cigar-lighter lead which will end up slamming 12V+ across the battery. This strikes me as pushing your luck a bit as there’s nowhere obvious for the excess energy to go when charging. I assume it must restrict the charge current to next to nothing. I haven’t tried it.
I do in practice always use a “proper” charger but it shouldn’t be a fire risk to charge from USB.
It’s a generic 18650. It doesn’t look to have either an endcap PCB or a thin PCB under the wrap. I’ve seen both types. It could have though, I haven’t removed the wrap, I’ve got spares to replace it but you can see or feel the metal strip running the length of the cell when there’s a protection PCB at the end.
If it had a protection board then I’d be happier to use USB but it’s still a rubbish way to charge LiIons for long life.