I recently was searching for some electronics on E-bay and I happened to find two sellers selling Ramsey FM25b transmitters fully assembled.
This interested me because I thought that its against FCC regulations to sell a transmitter that you built from a kit you are the one and only owner. To sell the unit I thought you would need FCC approval which tests the transmitter to make sure it qualifies for Part 15 and that upon approval you must append the Part 15 FCC certification sticker on the unit. However anyone can sell the exciter in kit form.
I recently was searching for some electronics on E-bay and I happened to find two sellers selling Ramsey FM25b transmitters fully assembled.
This interested me because I thought that its against FCC regulations to sell a transmitter that you built from a kit you are the one and only owner. To sell the unit I thought you would need FCC approval which tests the transmitter to make sure it qualifies for Part 15 and that upon approval you must append the Part 15 FCC certification sticker on the unit. However anyone can sell the exciter in kit form.
Are those the rules for built transmitters or is what they are doing allowed because I'm curious?
If the sellers are just Joe Blow's selling thier personal stuff then there is no violation anymore than a ham selling homebrew gear.
WDCX AM1610 Part 15
John
Owner-Operator-Chief Engineer-Program Manager
Krankshaft,
I interpret the rules as you do. Selling part 15 equipment, or for that matter any electronic products as defined in part 15 rules without certification and labelling is not legal. It seems the rules are very broad on this subject, but it also appears that enforcement is targeted to devices which are intentional radiators. For example, I am looking at an inline power supply for a USB drive and it is not FCC labelled.
If you check the link below for "NAL's" you will see examples where the FCC has cited people for this, especially for CB radios.
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/
One interesting current case involves Ramsey Electronics. The equipment involved clearly was not legal for part15 use as transmitting devices and I noticed that the FCC mentioned that this equipment could not be certified under part 15 for reasons of frequencies and powers involved. They do sell a popular part 15 FM transmitter kit which is not certified and they were not cited for this because the rules allow sale of such kits.
Neil
I've been browsing the Ramsey forums due to curiousity and they were cited for two kits that they were offering assembled one was a 1 watt power amp which could amplify the signal of their FM transmitters up to one watt clearly out of Part 15 regulations.
Another kit involved the FM30 exciter which had 2 versions the low output version and a 1 Watt output export version. They would sell the export version to anyone willing to sign a notice stating that they will export it. It turns out thats not good enough and they discontinued the sales of the exciter and the low output exciter in an assembled version.
However they still sell the 1 watt amp and the 1 watt FM30 in kit form.
Thanks for the link do you happen to have the direct link for the Ramsey case I can't seem to find them on the list.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-136A1.pdf
Here's the link. Hope you find it interesting.
Neil