I think ebay and others get away with it because they as entities don't actually sell - they're just the conduit between buyer and seller.
So, is it illegal to own/operate or just illegal to import non-certified equipment?
Do the rules specifically state you can't use a non-certified FM transmitter?
I can understand them going after the importer.
Good question.
If you buy a transmitter from China, then you are importing it into the country - is that illegal? Or is it only illegal for resellers?
The way the rules read, at least from my take, it appears that it isn't illegal to use a non-certified transmitter as long as it meets the technical guidelines for Part 15. In Canada, you CANNOT use a non-certified transmitter, unless you obtain a TAC (Technical Acceptance Certificate or something like that) from Industry Canada at your own expense.
I have to laugh when I see on forums that all Chinese transmitters are junk. Well I was looking at the bottom of my Talking House transmitter (TH5) and guess what I saw? Made In China... Hmmm... Junk you say? And this thing is certified.
Now take a shortwave receiver to this thing and you'll hear your transmitter all over the band and the harmonics and spurs are just as powerful as the main signal for more than 50-75 feet and keep on going almost to 100 Ft. Oh boy this POS is certified?..... I think the FCC has some serious issues.
The Decade CM-10 is a Chinese replica of the all too famous CZH, CZERF 05B (Sainsonic AX-05B) there are pictures of the actual board of both transmitters. The only thing Decade did was to put a leaky dummy load with a telescopic antenna (which has a screw and can be changed to any length anyone wants). Hardly hard to do anyone with half a brain could do it. Yet people paid a fortune for certification. Hardly seems right. And some testers say its still over the limit. How funny this is too.
I've seen non certified transmitters to be cleaner (dependent on make and model of unit).
Now here is a funny thing talking about harmonics and spurs. Most amateur Radio operators know that an antenna not matched to the transmitter not only can damage the transmitter, but can and often WILL cause harmonics and spurs. Has ANYONE of you took the antenna that came with your certified units and placed it on an MFJ antenna analyzer? Because if you had you'd understand why some of you are having issues with causing interference when you run your non matched antenna on your transmitter.
Is the FCCC doing their job here? Well when most anyone who knows about transmitters will tell you that it is a must to have an efficient antenna in order for proper operation.
So the FCC makes it legally impossible for you NOT to cause interference. See the Oxymoron here?
If your transmitter is clean, and you keep it down you'll have a lessor chance for a NOUO. I'd still like to read up on that boy and his certified unit. I'd be willing to bet his non efficient antenna must have caused some issue somewhere.
What about the Ham who damaged those ATU's of the talking house transmitter? I'll be willing to bet that dirty unit was causing issues all over the ham bands and he was sick to death of it. But rather than damage these units its the FCC he should have went after for the joke of a rule such as non matching antennas.
It's illegal to sell non-certified Part 15 transmitters in the USA.
You can build your own transmitter, either from plans or a kit and it's legal. Except then YOU are responsible for insuring that the signal transmitted meets the limits of the law. You can use any antenna you want, don't need a built in antenna or a special connector. You can build it however you like. It can have any power output from a nanowatt to a million watts, as long as the field strength is 250 uV/m or less at 3 meters and you meet the rules for spectral purity.
You are not an "importer" because you bought something from another country. You are simply a customer. You become an importer when you buy merchandise from another country with the intent to resell this merchandise. e.g. if you bought a gross of transmitters from China and listed them on ebay you have now become an importer and a seller of illegal merchandise. It's clear you hadn't purchased them for your personal use.
The FCC itself does not certify anything. A manufacturer spends thousands of dollars to have an approved lab run the necessary tests to demonstrate a device meets all applicable rules. Be it a Part 15 FM transmitter, a TV set or a $7,000 ham transceiver. The results from this approved and certified lab are then submitted to the FCC. They may, in rare instances, especially if something seems marginal, get a sample of the device and do their own testing, but this is very uncommon.
Even if you buy a certified Part 15 transmitter (AM, or FM it makes no difference) it's still YOUR responsibility to be sure it is operating within limits. The fact that it's certified is NOT a legal defense. If the agent shows up and says you're 3,000 uV/m over the limit, you can't say "but it's a certified transmitter" and get away with it. This is why it's wise to buy transmitters that have well established reputations from real sellers rather than ebay and Amazon. However, even those we consider to be decent, legal transmitters may not turn out that way. See my link to tests below.
There is no such thing as a "long range Part 15 FM transmitter". Long range and Part 15 are phrases that are mutually exclusive.
Power output has nothing to do with if your FM Part 15 transmitter is legal. Well, OK, it does. But not directly. 100mw is not legal, or illegal on FM. If the transmitter is made so darn near all that power is dissipated as heat and the legal limit comes off the antenna, then yes, 100mw would be legal. Same thing if it's a watt, or 5. If it's burning most of that rf off inside the box as heat it could still be legal, as long as no more than 250 uV/m is in the air at 3 meters.
As for comments about the Decade CM-10, the one I tested was well over the legal limits. As was the Whole House 3.0. The current C. Crane was legal, with room to spare. Some of you may recall I did these tests last fall with brand new transmitters and the calibrated FIM's that I use in my commercial radio work. I had over $20,000 worth of test equipment in the field with me, the EXACT SAME equipment the FCC uses in the field, the Potomac FIM and the Z-Tech 506.
This link will take you to a pdf of the tests I did last year, for those of you who missed them or would like a review.
http://www.ironrangecountry.com/fmfieldtests.pdf
Amazon themselves are not selling transmitters, Amazon sellers or associates are (most of what you can buy on Amazon isn't fulfilled by or shipped by Amazon). You see on a somewhat regular basis USA sellers getting busted for selling illegal transmitters. Trying to bust an overseas seller is expensive and nearly impossible.
Carl is right. You can use any Part 15 transmitter you like, as long as it meets the rules. If you buy an illegally imported Part 15 FM transmitter with no certification, but by some miracle it meets the rules specified, you're fine. The SELLER or IMPORTER may not be fine, as they're selling illegally. To sell them they must be certified. To be CERTIFIED you need to meet the rules about not being able to adjust the power over the limit, and having an affixed antenna, etc but the USER of the device does not have to meet these rules. As long as your output is legal.
Wdcx is correct. A manufactured transmitter is illegal if it's not certified. It may be legal for YOU to use it (if it meets the rules under Part 15) but it was not legal for it to be SOLD. So the seller violated the rules and would be subject to legal action based on that. But YOU would not be subject to the same action as you were not the seller of illegal equipment.
You can legally, 100% USE a non-certified transmitter. Whether you build it your self from old TV parts you find at the dump, or you buy it on eBay. It's perfectly legal to do so AS LONG as it MEETS the rules specified in Part 15 for output and harmonics, etc. These are difficult rules to meet and you will need to have a calibrated field strength meter and a spectrum analyzer etc. to determine compliance.
If mis-matched antennas caused such awful harmonics as stated above NONE of the certified FM Part 15 transmitters would have passed the certification tests. None. Virtually all these transmitters rely on antenna mismatch to reduce the transmitted signal to make them legal. I believe it worked out to an output of 11 nanowatts into a matched halfwave dipole to meet the Part 15 FM field strength rules. Of the Part 15 FM transmitter antennas I've seen they've all been either a telescopic whip or basically a piece of wire inside a fake “rubber duck” style antenna. Neither of which can accurately be measured for resonance of impedance with an MFJ analyzer.
There is often too much value placed on testing for harmonics and spurs when it really doesn't matter when the transmitters in question are already putting out way over the legal limit on frequency anyway. If you're reading 500 uV/m at 3 meters, why would you even care if the harmonics are off the scale? It was illegal as of the moment of the field strength test and should be rejected anyway.
Just some basics to keep in mind.
TIB
From TIB post: ... You can legally, 100% USE a non-certified transmitter.... AS LONG as it MEETS the rules specified in Part 15 for output and harmonics, etc. These are difficult rules to meet and you will need to have a calibrated field strength meter and a spectrum analyzer etc. to determine compliance. ...
Also, the fields present near the surface of the earth vary widely depending on the heights and physical orientations of the transmit antennas and the path distance, as shown in the graphic below.
The FM fields measured at a given horizontal distance from the transmit antenna may comply with Part 15 or BETS at one elevation above the earth, but not for higher elevations.
If the height of the test antenna used by an FCC field inspector is greater than that used in the original tests using a calibrated FI meter made by/for a Part 15 FM operator, there is a reasonable chance that the FCC measurement could show non-compliance with §15.239.
The Potomac manual gives the numbers for testing at 7 feet and 30 feet above ground. The margin for error listed at 7 feet is 18%, it's less at 30 feet, but I don't remember off hand, as I don't get my meter to 30 feet above ground!
It seems for most practical purposes this 18% error is still acceptable. I haven't seen a NOUO that listed 295 uV/m as the FS that caused the problem. And is all the NOUO's I've read the FCC always has used the margin of error in favor of the violator.
I also generally think that where the FCC might be located when taking their readings there could be other physical factors -- signal reflection, etc. But again, in most of the violations I've seen (if not all) the FS readings have been GROSSLY over the limit where these factors wouldn't matter anyway.
Also, in most FM installations there's going to be quite a bit of directivity of the signal. No Part 15 installation is going to be away from physical things messing with the signal. The FCC won't care if you're at 50 UV/m in one direction and 500 uV/m in another. That second reading will put you over.
TIB
I get the beating a dead horse topic. But lo these many years the same questions come up and need to be answered again and again. There are new people on here every day. They gnerally have the same questions. Searching the answers can be tough, especially when you don't know exactly what to search for.
And on some sites searching isn't even possible as visitors aren't worthy of using the search feature 😉
TIB
Not all Chinese transmitters are the same....everything's made in China(except BV/Waio and Decade) but there is a difference between them. The US based transmitters are made in China but are designed here and have a Chinese manufacturer make it to their specs and have it certified while the inports like FMUser and Vast and Hlly are just Chinese originals they sell here through Ebay and Amazon and don't have it certified to be legal here.
The Decade CM-10 was adopted by Decade and keeping the same design as the CZH-O5B had a Chinese company modify it so it could be certified here by changing the antenna connection, frequency stops at 107.5 and an output transistor bypassed.
Oh yes, the Procaster and I think the Rangmaster are not made in China either.
So I guess not everything is made in China lol!
Mark
In a sense there are two Chinas.
Mainland China is the "Peoples Republic of China" and was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party.
The original government of China fled to the island of Taiwan and formed the "Republic of China" where I believe Sangean makes many of the world's radios and the C.Crane FM transmitters.
Good transmitters probably come from Taiwan and bad ones from Mainland China.
That's a wild guess with no foundation in fact.
Yes the antenna is the most importain part of transmisson of course ....Match the antenna and transmitter and you have a win but also keep it down and you should be ok ....Should ...As far as keeping this unit in line not sure as of yet im sure i will keep looking for that china certifed transmitter lol ...Btw isnt most of our equipment from china anyway ...Thanks for all the input guys keep broadcasting !!!
Have seen a certified transmitter from China.....don't know how good it is though.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009FIELG2?m=A13QS7UJIEY0SF&ref_=v_sp_widget_detail_page
I would check the certification to see if it's Part 15.
And no the majority of good certified transmitters are not from China AM or FM except the C Crane and the Wholehouse 3
Mark
I don't think it's the country where a product comes from, as much as the engineering. The VASTINT design seems to come from one guy who was hacking around and built a transmitter with DSP chips, then posted the design. I read and saved the full schematic somewhere, but don't have the link now. As the author discusses the circuit, he talks about the spurs and shows them on a spectrum analyzer. I didn't think the spurs were bad, for the low power of the unit at least.
I think it's that way with a lot of hobbyist circuits, someone comes up with a circuit that works, maybe does something new, as with the DSP functions and USB audio, and the same circuit gets copied over and over, as happened with the BA1404 FM stereo IC in the 1990s.
People didn't really try to design around that chip to make it sound better, they just took the base circuit from ROHM, and added amplifiers, and designed different boards, or added PLL control, but all of it couldn't change the fact that the circuit was engineered for low end uses, like Walkman to car stereo links.
What kits really need are design teams behind them, or one guy who lives and breathes broadcast radio and transmitters, to look at every problem that transmitters can have, and fix them. It shouldn't be that hard to get nearly perfect transmission on AM or FM these days.
My opinion is that DSP is kind of new to the scene, and those one chip integrated transmitters just aren't perfected yet, even with the implied perfection of digital signal production.
My favorite circuit right now for FM would be an analog dual loop PLL exciter, those are very mature circuits, then a DSP multiplex and audio, also a perfected field, but where most cheap hobby transmitters fall down.