AmateurRadio.com

No, this isn’t a post that was meant to go in my other blog One Foot in the Grave. But I just cannot believe the amount of bad luck I have ordering radio goods from suppliers.

A few months ago I wrote about what a difference it made to the effectiveness of helical “rubber duck” VHF antennas if they were tuned precisely to 145MHz and I described how I had tried to lower the resonant frequency of some helical antennas I already had that were too high in frequency.

A few days ago I discovered that Waters and Stanton sell a tunable VHF rubber duck with BNC socket that can be trimmed to frequency by the user. As I have decided to switch completely to BNC antennas on my hand helds I needed another so I decided to order one.

It came this morning, but when I tried to fit it to the BNC adapter on my antenna analyzer in order to start trimming it, it wouldn’t go. When I examined the BNC closely I saw that the insulation had melted and deformed, presumably during the process of applying heat shrink tubing. So it is completely useless! You would have thought an “ISO 9001 Registered Firm” would have heard of quality control, wouldn’t you?

I have written Waters and Stanton a snotty email containing a copy of the photograph asking if they would send me a replacement. Since I have no desire to incur additional expense sending the faulty one back I have also asked how they will reimburse me for the postage.