Fake Diamond

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Diamond SRH805S stubby helical antenna I bought on eBay to use with my VX-8E. Its performance turned out to be much worse than expected and the antenna was not even resonant in the 2m band according to my antenna analyzer. Having looked at it a bit more closely I now believe the antenna I bought is not a real Diamond SRH805S at all.

The pictures above show, from left to right, the antenna I bought, an unbranded "short dual band SMA antenna" advertised by an eBay seller from Hong Kong, and a picture of a genuine Diamond SRH805S taken by an owner. You can see that the fake antenna and the unbranded antenna look identical apart from the "Diamond" labelling on the fake. There is a wide knurled brass band on the fake and the unbranded antennas, where the real Diamond has just a narrow smooth band. The fake and the unbranded antennas both have a double groove molded into the case, the real Diamond doesn't. The picture of the unbranded antenna gives its height as 52mm, matching exactly the one I have, while another picture I found of the Diamond SRH805S shows the height to be only 45mm.

The word "Diamond" on the fake antenna is not in the same font as on the real antenna, which uses a bolder font matching that used in Diamond company advertising and on the packaging. The labelling on the real antenna is blue while the fake is white. To be fair, I have found an image on a Canadian radio dealer's site where the labelling is white. It is also written top to bottom rather than bottom to top and has an aircraft logo on it. This may be a picture of an older version of the antenna.

The fake antenna came in a genuine-looking plastic case with a yellow back and a clear front. The forgers appear to have reproduced the lettering exactly. But on the genuine antenna cases the model number SRH805S is written in red. The genuine Diamond antenna comes with a rubber washer to seal between the antenna and the radio body if there is a gap. It also includes a printed sheet giving the specification of the product - the fake didn't.

One clue to the fact the antenna I bought was a fake is the price. I paid £6.99 including postage from Hong Kong for this antenna, which is about the same as the unbranded SMA antenna. Hams in the Far East have often told me prices there are a lot less than they are here so I was not as suspicious as perhaps I should have been.

Radioworld in the UK advertises the Diamond SRH805S for £25.96, while some Chinese and Hong Kong eBay sellers have what appear to be the genuine item (but could just be a better fake) for around £20 including postage. A Polish dealer (allegro.pl) is advertising what from the picture looks exactly like the antenna I bought for the zloty equivalent of about £14. A UK dealer (www.dvdongle.co.uk) is advertising a Diamond SRH805S for £13.99 but no picture is shown. In view of what I have discovered I would be interested to see what it looked like.

It might come as a bit of a surprise to many people that there are fake ham radio products on sale. I wonder how often these fake products are being passed off as the real thing for the full price?

What I want to do now is figure out how to get inside this antenna, preferably without resorting to use of a hacksaw, and see if I can tweak it down on to the 2m band and make something useful out of it.

Prince Charles visits Cockermouth

Prince Charles visited Cockermouth this morning to thank the rescue services for their work during the floods of a week ago and hear at first hand what happened. This was no whistle-stop tour for a photo-op and a couple of soundbites as happened when politicians visited a few days earlier. It is common knowledge that the Prince loves the Lake District and often takes holidays here and his visit was clearly motivated by genuine interest and concern.

He arrived by RAF helicopter shortly after 10 o'clock and his first stop was the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue headquarters where he met representatives of all the rescue services and voluntary organizations that had been involved, together with various dignitaries including the Mayor of Cockermouth. After that he walked down to "Main Street at Mitchells" - the former job centre owned by local firm Mitchells to which several flooded-out Main Street business have temporarily relocated. He was there for more than half an hour talking to business owners and customers inside.

Prince Charles didn't walk down to Main Street to see the devastation for himself nor did he visit any flooded-out homes. Perhaps the powers that be decided it would be too dirty for him. Still it was nice of him to come. It is the closest I've come to any member of the Royal Family. The questions he asked showed genuine interest and concern and he was very warm and sympathetic and I'm sure he helped the people he spoke to forget their troubles for a little while.

Ham Humour

Apologies to my regular readers for the lack of much radio related content during the last week. I think that witnessing at close hand the disaster that has befallen our small home town and affected acquaintances and local businesses has put hobby activities into perspective, with the result that I haven't felt much like going on the air or writing about radio. Hopefully normal service will resume in the near future.

I have still been keeping up with the blogs, and a new one that I recently added to my blogroll is The Fi-Ni Report. It's a satirical, tongue-in-cheek look at big gun DXing and contesting, and a refreshing look at a hobby that often takes itself just a bit too seriously. I recommend it.

Were the Cumbria floods man made?

As Cockermouth clears up after the floods and tries to get back to some semblance of normal life there's a rumour going round the town that the flooding was caused - or at least made worse than it need have been - by human action. It is being suggested that United Utilities, which owns Thirlmere lake and operates it as a reservoir, opened the sluice gates to release water into the River Greta which arrived in Keswick and then Cockermouth just at the time when the water level was already critical. This might explain why people who were there talk of the water level increasing with unbelievable rapidity.

Local people have been asking for years for the water level in Thirlmere to be maintained at a lower level to allow it to act as a sink for periods of heavy rainfall. But United Utilities has refused, being more interested in protecting its water asset for the benefit of its shareholders.

Meanwhile Cumbria County Council's new chief executive, whose salary is reported to be £170,000 per year (that's getting on for $300,000 for my US readers) has given her opinion that the disaster that occurred here is an example of climate change caused by global warming. I'm not sure why a local authority serving a population the size of Cumbria's needs an official whose salary is practically as much as the total remuneration of the British Prime Minister. But it might be better if she got on with the job of making decisions about what is going to be done and leave the unqualified pontificating to people like me who are happy to do it for nothing.

Two months on and what a difference

Just over two months ago I posted a review of the Elecraft K3 18 months on. I was fairly critical of the way some things worked, such as the memories or the fact that audio equalization was not disabled in data mode, and of the fact that some promised features such as synchronous AM detection were still unimplemented. Yesterday Elecraft released to production a firmware update that addresses all of those issues - and adds a lot more besides. I'm happy to say that my K3 now works the way I always hoped it would.

My review here and another similar one I posted on eHam provoked a lot of reaction. I received many messages of agreement, but also a lot of hate mail from people suggesting that since my criticisms were mostly about using modes like FM, AM and digital, perhaps I shouldn't have bought a K3 in the first place. However, Elecraft clearly took my comments to heart and sprung into action. Within two weeks - yes, two weeks - I was testing beta versions of firmware that addressed both the memory access and digital audio equalization issues, and synchronous AM was implemented a week or two later. Try that with your Kenwood, Icom or Yaesu.