The news that Import Communications will stop selling / supporting Wouxun products didn’t come as a surprise — Ed has shown to been unhappy on more than one occasion. He has no intention to stay diplomatic, as the image below clearly shows:
What did surprise me (of all people) is that Wouxun hand-helds appear to develop a problem regarding retaining memory contents. After some searching and reading I must conclude that the problem really exists.
Ed writes:
ALL Wouxun dual band radios have an internal defect that the factory refuses to address. They know there is a problem, they know how to fix it, but they will blame the problem on everything in the world except what it really is. Without warning, any of their dual band models can “lose memory”. One day when the radio is turned on, it will revert to speaking Chinese and the display will show channel numbers instead of channel names. Often the programmed channels themselves will be gone. Reprogramming the radio may restore it for a short time but often it’s cured for only one off/on cycle.
I have both the KG-UVD1P and the KG-UVD6P in use, and so do numerous Dutch hams I know. Yes, some had to replace the PTT micro-switch after years of (ab)use, but that’s about it. I have not encountered ‘Alzheimer Wouxuns’ yet.
Ed will now strengthen his relation with Anytone. I hope that Anytone will live up to Ed’s expectations. This brand too started off earning a questionable reputation by introducing products too fast and having their customers sort out the bugs.
*Update* I just talked to Ruud PE1OPG, owner of Bamiporto.nl. While he sold at least 500 dual-band Wouxun models, he only ran into the problem once. Statistically that’s an irrelevant percentage of failures.
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Zo zeg, dat is een heftige reactie!
That’s a hefty reaction from Ed!
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I maintain (program, since thats pretty much all there is to do with these) a bunch of these radios. I know that alot of them have problems, but i think that one batch was particularly bad. 3 of the radios came from the same batch of radios and all 3 died within a year. Once we replaced those one of them has died at least one or 2 more times. We may have replaced even more, but i dont remember. I think total we are at right around half have had no issues and half have died, luckily they have been covered by warranty. We have been pretty lucky with them lately, but will probably run into some more issues pretty soon since its been a while. We did narrow it down to the fact that the radios seem to fail more often when the batteries are abused. It seems like if you are careless about taking care of the battery, they fail more often. The ones that seemed to have the most problems are ones that are left on the charger constantly, like for weeks at a time, and radios that have been left with a dead battery or even no battery for long periods of time. As a side note, we have not found any issues with using the radios while on the charger, and it doesnt seem to affect battery life.(Even if it did, batteries are cheap enough where its not a huge issue to replace them.) These battery suspicions have not been confirmed, because we didnt open up the radios because they were covered by warranty, so this may not be related, but from what we have seen, it seems to be the case.
ben ik die ene daar last van heeft? knap irritant btw
Ik denk niet dat jij ‘die ene’ bent, want die kreeg van Bamiporto een nieuwe… jij bent dus ‘die andere’ waar we tot voor kort niets van wisten! 🙂
Are we talking about mobile radios or HT radios? Because I didn’t know that Anytone had any HTs.
I have a UVD1P radio and it works fine, I’ve never had issues with it at all, but I am always wanting to try new radios also.
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I just wonder how many other Chinese radios have this defective chip.
Let’s not jump into conclusions before we know more. Ed Griffin’s story is not supported by hard data, nor is there a reference to the experts he mentions. In his story Ed uses the phrase “I’ve been told” twice in a row, which could indicate that he’s not really sure himself.
For example: it might not be the NVRAM chip itself which is responsible, but the way it’s used (pointless re-writing during every on-off cycle).
That doesn’t change the fact that we’re dealing with a bug, of course, but it would also imply that other brands are less likely to develop the same problem, even when they use the same chip. Most brands I have do only (re)write data into NVRAM when specifically instructed to do so by the user (programming software).
I wanted to get Ed on the phone to have a chat about all of this, but his company hides behind a PO Box and phone numbers aren’t listed on the website. If I wouldn’t know any better, my first reaction would be to avoid such a company!
To be honestly, when I saw Ed’s had shown his emotion on Wouxun last year, I did not think that is the right way to do business.
I would like to bet that after several years, Ed will express similar stuff with Anytone when he broken up with Anytone.
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As the main distributor for Wouxun brand for many years I guess you would say that I unable to agree with Ed, but I am. We have sold THOUSANDS of their entire range and bar a very very low percentage of failures, have not encountered the problem he reports. My guess is he has a beef with Wouxun and I have to say has gone about reporting the issue in a very amateur and unprofessional way. I could indeed report on my findings with Anytone but I wouldn’t dream of reporting the findings on an open forum. What I will say is that I stopped selling AT many years ago and continue to support the excellent Wouxun brand. ML&S Ltd UK
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Well, it’s too early to tell who’s right or wrong. What shocks me the most is the totally tasteless cartoon pissing on the manufacturer’s logo. Not to mention the pirated an unlicensed use of the Calvin character. This is no way to run a business no matter how angry you might be. Caveat emptor!
Ed has always been a bit of a phallus, and I wont be taking much notice of this
latest tantrum.
I think this guy has had a general axe to grind before with Wouxun, he tried to make out he was sole distributor in the US then fell out for some unknown reason?
Now he is pushing Anytone, its more than likely he can make more pound for pound out of the switch?
I have had a Wookey for a number of years and its still working without any issues!
73 G1KQH
well my nearly 3 year old Wouxun KGUVD1-P crashes occasionally, been doing it for a year already. the user data is all lost except the (thankfully) memories. The sets feel cheap, and they are, so i’m not too upset, I’ve had my money’s worth out of it, but forgetting memorioes is a very real issue and not limited to Wouxuns..
i had an old Yupiteru 7100 scanner which crashed frequently and lost all its data, worse still its had to be entered manually, the Wouxun at least had USB programming.. (& i back up) You pay bottom price, you get poor quality, you pay real prices, you get proper equipment … (unless you buy the overpriced / crap plastic dstar trash) this type of cheap quality of much Amateur Branded gear drove me into the arms of Motorola, and thats where I’m staying.
I’m having the same problem with the quad band the kg-uv950p I have a problem with the radio and the power supply. The power supply is showing 13.8 volts but the radio’s voltage does not match what the power supply is putting out, and the radio it has issues in it self he radio powers down for what reason why it does that while the power supply is on, I don’t know if it is a feature to prevent the radio from high voltage or a safety feature they failed to mention, so I’m send in power supply and radio back to the vendor to see if to fix the radio or replace it. It is very frustrating when the programming software does not work with windows eight operating systems.
They have to understand that computer technology changes every two years and they should take these products and revise the compatibility issues and fix them and make programming and manual radio easy to understand and the software compatible with the changing computer operating technology and Wouxun hk, and the dealer that sell these products should be aware of these issues with their radios and try to fix the problems with the software,radios, and power supplies.
I don’t know why they introduce something that has issues, I guess that we are the testers and finding out for ourselves.