Thursday, October 18, 2012

Nagoya holograms rumbled!

I've written on the subject of fake HT antennas on eBay before. It's a matter of concern whether an antenna is fake or genuine. Lately the antennas sold under the Nagoya brand name have come under suspicion. Recently purchased antennas have blue lettering printed directly on to the base, similar to some fake antennas purporting to be made by the reputable Diamond Antenna company.
Two identical fake hologram labels
These new Nagoyas come in an orange plastic sleeve rather than a yellow one. The sleeves carry a silver hologram label with two serial numbers on them. Presumably the idea is that if you want to check an antenna is genuine you can contact the manufacturer, give them the numbers and they will confirm or deny that the product is genuine.

Today I read in a Yahoo group that someone had obtained an antenna with an identical hologram sticker to another member. I have two such antennas but I had never thought to check the stickers. When I did, I found that the stickers that came with two different Nagoya antennas were identical!

You probably can't read the numbers off the picture above (try clicking the picture to see the full-size version) but the top number is TWx00647488x where x is a Chinese character. The lower number is CNx3333081x. If you have recently purchased Nagoya antennas and got ones with the silver sticker, I bet they have the same serial numbers!

It seems that the only way to be sure of getting an HT antenna that works is to buy a Diamond branded antenna from your reputable US, UK or EU dealer! Better still, take an antenna analyzer with you and test it before handing over any money.
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6 comments:

  1. G0FTDThursday, October 18, 2012 7:06:00 pm

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. AnonymousThursday, October 18, 2012 7:15:00 pm

    Very worrying, thank-you for pointing the issue out, 73

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  3. G0FTDThursday, October 18, 2012 7:19:00 pm

    Hmmm.

    I have my old 701's purchase a year or two ago, and a bunch of 701's
    that I bought back in the summer.

    I bought them for my personal stock and one for a friend.

    Now these ones come in orange (the same as your fakes)but don't have the blue writing on them. They have
    the same holograms and numbers.

    I've never even opened them until you mentioned it, so I've just opened them to give them a test.

    They are perfect on 2/70.

    So, the colour of the pack seems
    irrelevent, BUT the writing does.

    At least until the fakers change
    from blue to silver on black ;-)

    73 de Andy G0FTD

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  4. UnknownFriday, October 19, 2012 9:34:00 am

    My blue lettering NA-771 performs no better than my silver sticker NA-701, If the blue lettering antennas aren't fakes then the only conclusion I can come to is that Nagoya quality control is very poor. Most people who buy these antennas will be comparing them with a stock rubber duck, which almost anything will be better than, and they won't be putting them on an antenna analyzer either.

    Julian, G4ILO

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  5. VE9KK Friday, October 19, 2012 12:00:00 pm

    Good morning Julian, in the past the saying used to be if it was way under priced...or to good a deal to be real....it was!! It now has changed in that the prices more or less are the same for both the fakes and the real deal. As you say get the product from a reputable dealer.
    Mike

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  6. G0FTDFriday, October 19, 2012 5:39:00 pm

    I wonder where your fakes came from Julian ?

    All my 701s came from 409 shop,so far never had a bum one.

    The only bum antennas I've had are the ones sold as Harvest,
    or those really poor stubbies that we tried out about 2 years ago.

    Andy

    ReplyDelete