Quansheng is the Quansheng UV-K6 mechanically weak, or did I get a bad one?

[Jim_Shaffer]

I bought the radio primarily to use as a cheap scanner that I could take on my bike (using one of the ubiquitous handlebar mounts from Amazon or wherever), so I would have something to listen to without worrying about dropping one of my expensive scanners. Tests at home had shown that the scanning speed (with 3rd-party firmware) was adequate for my area, and the battery life seemed great (longer than my good scanners on NiMH, in fact.) But on the first ride, after about an hour the displayed battery voltage suddenly started dropping erratically. At first I blamed the firmware because re-flashing and re-calibrating seemed to fix it, but it soon started again. A few weeks after that, I found that the radio would suddenly lose power entirely and reboot, and would sometimes drop out of scanning mode like it was registering non-existent keypresses.

I started playing around with it, and I discovered that if I pressed the battery *up* into the back of the radio, which should make it make *better* contact with the spring contacts, it would cut out! So it seems as if the contacts are intermittent somewhere *within* the radio. I haven't figured out how to open it up yet, but this may be a moot point as I don't own any good soldering gear (or a steady hand!)

So, I'm wondering if anyone else is using their radio in rough conditions, and has had a similar issue. I don't know whether to spend $30 on another Quansheng in hopes that this one was a fluke, or look for a more solid radio. (I'm not even sure what that would be in the budget range -- do any of the others have decent scanning speed?)

 

[a727469]

I looked at this originally but decided on the BAOFENG UV-17R Plus. Which I thought had a nicer screen but similar specs and about the same price. I use it mainly to scan around 10 vhf freqs and it seems pretty fast..no problems with it after about 6 months.

 

[vagrant]

I am not rough with my UV-K6, so I cannot comment on that aspect. Also, I don't use budget transceivers for scanning, so no input there either. I did just turn it on and really pressed on the battery from all directions and it remained powered on.

Anyways, your initial point was the low cost. Now you'll have one for home use and another for the bike, or at least a spare battery.