Thats what kills me about a large portion of ham operators. They get more offended by violations of FCC rules than drug dealers and child rapist. Wannabe radio cops whos technical knowledge consist of mostly misinformation. Like a cult of FCC worship.
I have had similar experiences with equipment. Had a direct from china FDC-160 HT, and this was when they first really started becoming popular, right aftrer I got my ticket.
It worked GREAT until I mentioned what I was talking on, and like magic............
suddenly.....it became TOO LOUD, distorted, overmodulated, eventually it started to throw harmonics, both on 2 meters and out the band.
This problem would mysteriously go away when I drove within range of another repeater and started talking on it.
Then I had the Midland Syntech-1, 80 watts, 80 channels, re-aligned and modified for 2 meter band. Hit repeaters over 100 miles away with that thing, they could hear me better than I could hear them.
At the first mention of running commercial gear, its like, how do you blablabla. Your too loud, cut your power down,etc. One dude tried to say my radio was illegal, because it was fixed at 80 watts.
Ok so it more power than necessary, by the way they interpreted it, then they should cut their HT's down to milliwatts, because sometimes thats enough to open a repeater, oh does the HT not go lower than 1 watt, illegal!.
Not all people were jerks, and running such gear started alot of debate that went on long after I signed off.
This particular element of radio amateur is what hurts the hobby more than anything.
