Anyone who has been on Ebay before and is tech savvy or a ham has seen these chinese radios selling for around $50-75. I went ahead and ordered one just to see what they are all about and if they are truly worth the money. To say that I am surprised at the performance versus the price is a understatement. It actually works pretty good!
The FDC-460A UHF FM Transceiver
The radio was purchased on E-bay and shipped to me from Hong Kong. 7-10 days for shipping is what they advertised so I was not surprised when it arrived 8 days later. The package was wrapped in green outer paper with a customs sticker and bubble wrap on the inside. After opening the box I got exactly what I ordered. The radio was nicely packaged with the antenna and desktop charger which in my opinion needs to be redesigned (more about the charger later!). The battery slips on the radio tight and secure with no play. The manual has two sets of instructions one being English and the other at no surprise Chinese. It is understandable however a little hard to follow as the translation will lack proper grammar and spelling at times. I plan on making a more simplified manual and posting it for others. The radio fits good in your hand and not to bulky which is always a good thing. The screen is a nice blue that cannot be changed but for $50 it looks pretty good (see video below). After turning the radio on you will note a small tone burst that last two seconds and the screen and key will light up. Programming is straight forward if you read the manual you will see that everything is dependant on the "F" key with the 12 keys under it acting as a menu list so to speak, I plugged a couple of local 70CM repeaters in and received fair reports. The Desktop charger is my only gripe as the bottom row keys on the radio are half depressed when you put the radio in to charge, Oh well it still charged the radio in about 8 hours. This review is only a short one as I only received the radio yesterday and have not had a lot of time to use it. Oh, the other thing is there is no Alpha tags in the memory system, remember your paying $50! No DTMF supported either! The radio can hold up to 99 channels with repeater offsets and supports standard CTCSS/DCS codes. Not a great radio but not a bad radio either for the price. Check the short video out for a quick Demo. Mike KC2PLJ
So you get a little idea on how it looks and sounds. You can thank the Syracuse PD for the audio on the radio as that was one of the receive only frequencies I plugged in. As I said before, reports on the 70cm repeaters were not bad at all.
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