If you listen to the radio bands in the United States, you might wonder if anyone at the FCC is paying attention, or if they are too busy selling spectrum and regulating the Internet. Apparently however, they are watching some things. The commission just levied a $180,000 fine on a company in Florida for selling audio/visual transmitters that use the ham bands as well as other frequencies. The FCC charged that Lumenier Holdco LLC (formerly known as FPV Manuals LLC) was marketing uncertified transmitters some of which exceeded the 1-W power limit for ham transmitters used on model craft. Equipment that is purely for ham use is normally exempt from certification, but since the equipment was able to operate on other frequencies, this was a violation. In addition, even for licensed ham use, some of the transmitters were using too much power. The company stopped selling the units in question after an FCC inquiry back in April. We can’t help but think that in years past building a consumer product with a significant radio transmitter was a big task, and someone would bring up the FCC rules and certifications before much progress had been made. These days though you can easily acquire building block ICs and modules to field a product in a few weeks that would have taken a sophisticated team years of effort not long ago. We don’t know if that’s what happened to FPV Manuals, but it would be easy to imagine a hacker with an idea and a Kickstarter winding up with a big FCC (or other regulatory) fine. This is an even worse situation now that it is easy to find customers all over the world who are all subject to different laws and regulations. We covered this story back in January when the ARRL were lobbying about it, so it’s good to see an outcome for them. We’ve talked a bit about what it takes to get products through certifications. Of course, that’s just part of the puzzle of scaling up to production. https://hackaday.com/2017/12/20/fcc-fines-drone-fpv-maker-for-using-radio-spectrum/#comment-4266485
Nope, without Part15 or Part95 Type Acceptance it is illegal, to Advertise, Market, or Import such devices into the USA.... Even if you are a Chinese Manufacture....
I think AL7AQs point is... the one time the FCC has gone after someone selling non-type certified equipment its a small US company yet they've done nothing to the dozen or so Chinese companies flooding the US with their non-type certified gear.
Sounds a little like the old speeding defense "But Judge I wasn't the only one speeding" Judge to defendant "see the court clerk and pay your fine and costs".
They must have slipped their false teeth in for a few minutes since everyone who knows much of anything knows the FCC is a small toothless lion who nobody fears.They fine many but a great number never pay anything.The FCC is as useless as the ARRL. Clayton W4KVW
In my personal opinion the FCC Part 15 type acceptance technical standards are pretty weak. Just turn on your radio and you will here them all. When I bought this house in 2005 the noise level on 160 meters was only S1, just amazing. But now it's +20 db over S9, thanks to the proliferation of all of the new part 15 devices that my neighbors have bought.
Reminds me, I need to look into the newer Fed-Ex trucks. One pulled up beside me and blasted me with S9+ data bursts every 2 seconds or so. Not ignition or computer noise like I see from other vehicles.
may be illegal to sell, but we can legally use 'em.. our license makes us responciable for our emissions, else we could not scratch build our xmtrs... our xmtrs do NOT have to be type accepted,,
Yep, I'm running into the problems above while trying to assemble a 5.8GHz setup for ATV and narrowband FM. I got the idea from the BATC guys in the UK who are already doing it. Good thing is, its relatively cheap to get on these bands. A transmitter runs $12-20 for nearly a watt, an amp can run about $25, and a receiver runs $20-40. Run these on a 5.8GHz 28 to 30dB dish, and its a heck of a setup under $150. Run a 30dB dish on both ends, with 3.5w out, wow. The EIRP is ridiculous--which is good and potentially bad. After much shopping, more than a few of these devices require you to be a ham to use it as intended. Does anyone ever check to see if you ARE a ham? Ebay didn't care. Neither did Amazon. And the hobby store across town didn't care either. I appreciate the cheapness of these devices for my own use, but not so much as they could also potentially jam wi-fi bands, knock legitimate devices offline, spectral purity is questionable, and their cheap price and makes them great hard-to-find noisemakers. Tell your 10 year old neighbor he has to get a FCC license to play with his new Christmas present. I wonder how many actually register these things, as now required. We really opened up a mess with drones, even when they weren't first-person view. Now every idiot in America can fly these toys in front of a landing airliner. And I thought laser pointers were getting out of control, this is way worse in so many other ways.
Just for my own personal learning/ interest. Do you mind explaining where / what the power limitations on a transmitter for ham radio is? Even if it is on a microwave/UHF SHF frequency? Seriously. Not being a microwave / SHF guy, I guess that I would have thought the limitations were the same as for lower frequencies even though the hazards might be very much higher. So please help me out here, just for the sake of knowledge/ clarification. Thanks!
Part 97.215c limits model aircraft telecommand to 1 watt. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.215
FCC gave HobbyKing (Lumenier) plenty of opportunity. https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-17-936A1.pdf
