One of the things that concerns me as much as the price of this mobile rig is service.
A little over 20 years ago I bought an Icom 2400A dual bander at my local ham store. It worked great for a week, then one day I turned it on, it flickered, went out and then nothing, no light no sound, it was dead. I checked the fuses, read the trouble shooting section in my book, asked for some ideas on the local repeaters, and none of the suggestions got it working. So, I put it in the box and drive it over to the store where I got it, and tell my friend the sales guy what happened, he in turn calls the service tech out and hands it to him. The service guy says he'll take a look and he takes it into the service area and opens it up. Meanwhile I'm just chatting with the guys in the store, and in about 10 minutes or so the service guy brings it back out and says , all fixed up, he probed around and found a cold solder joint on the main board, and said it was a common problem with some of the Icom's and they had service bulletins on it so he knew about what to look for.
Well, I was happy camper, I thanked them, put it in my car, turned it on, and it's been working great for well over 20 years. I has never skipped a beat, and still looks like the day I took it out of the box.
My point is what do you do with this Chinese rig if it craps out a week after you paid well over $300 for it ? You probably have to air mail it back to Hong Kong, or wherever it has to go, because I doubt that they have a service shop here in the US. If you're lucky you might see your radio again in 3 or 4 months, or maybe they will just ship you a new one if theres a warranty, and I think there is, but who knows what you have to do to get these things replaced or repaired.
Now if they had a service facility here and you could get it repaired, and sent back to you within a few weeks that wouldnt be bad. I had to ship my HF rig off for repair a few years ago, and it's a Kenwood, and I got it fixed and shipped back to me in 3 weeks time which was not bad at all.
So far the lowest price I have seen was $320, and I believe that is from a company in Hong Kong, which is still pretty high, next to any of the big names that we all know. Maybe in time, we'll see them come down into the $279 area, once they see we aren't going to buy them for $389, I don't know. But if they read the ham radio forums I am sure they will see our displeasure over the prices they are posting for them.
I'm in no big hurry, I've got a few good mobile rigs, so I'll just sit back and watch what happens.
