Samcom, Anyone?

[Ian]

Samcom is offering some nice looking radios on Amazon that claim to be GMRS certified, and their featureset is rather compelling.

 

Well, no it's not.  It's the user interface that's compelling.  It's got a large, clear, and backlit LCD.  It can simultaneously watch two channels, or transmit on one or another using a face-mounted or side-mounted dual PTT system.  Allegedly, the front PTT transmits on all the programmed channels simultaneously.  Grabbing one of those simply so I only have to say "WRCH569, Monitoring" once is tempting, honestly.  

 

It's a mid-tier 20-channel radio with unclear FCC licensing data, but claims to radiate 4.95 watts with them, 3 watts on their website, and a whole bunch'o other useless information, but the half-inch high channel numbers, physical channel-change knob, and lockable all-of-the-buttons is kind of compelling for when you want to hand a radio to someone who struggles with anything as complicated as a Radius SP21.

[coryb27]

I would not even concider this a mid tier radio, mostly sold on Amazon and eBay its nothing more then a kids toy. For starters it has no ability to do repeater offsets, or programmable tones. A closer look at the company's website and its an Alibaba store front with the typical rebranded TYT, HYT and Baofang offerings as well as some new Chinese junk I have not seen before. I lookup the website registration and it was recently re-hosted and the ownership records updated in January of this year.

 

I would not waste a single cent on this junk, I will stick to my Motorola gear.

[berkinet]

Note the FCC registration cited in the Amazon listing is for Part-15C, not even Part-90, let alone Part-95x.

[WRAF213]

There are lots, lots of radios on Amazon from questionable sources that claim FRS/GMRS/BRS operation but have only Part 15 certification (if any at all) and require programming to bring into GMRS spectrum. Advertising like that is how small businesses and children end up on public safety or federal spectrum. Illegal marketing, but inaction is the trend.