mcHF clone, right out of the box

My original - genuine! - mcHF has gone to that great playground in the sky, where all radios emanate honest 599 signals on all bands. After so many years of performance-enhancing (and corrective) surgery, the poor radio was ready to be put to pasture.

To replace it, I ordered one of the many clones and received it yesterday.

I will need to do a full alignment on the radio - the displayed frequency differs from the actual, the upper sideband differs greatly from the lower on CW in terms of where zero beat occurs and the bar graph (RF Out and SWR) is way off on transmit (though the receive S-meter seems to work well).

All of these things are correctable and detailed alignment procedures are available online.

But, right out of the box, I'm easily making CW QSO's on all bands. Quality control of these clones is a long-standing concern. Connect Systems used to sell them to US buyers but will no longer do so due to numerous problems with many of them. In fact, they now have 7 problematic mcHF clones for sale.

So I wondered how mine might fare, straight outta da box. So far, so good:

I will do the alignment upon my return from Texas in a week or two. I cut Daytona Bike Week short - not my scene at all - so I'll be leaving for (and returning from) TX sooner than planned, as the UHSDR alignment and RadioKit-20 construction await.

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