eBay Restricts Listings of Radio Equipment, but Exempts Ham-Band-Only Gear

InsidiousWombat

I wonder how long the same gear will be sold with ham band only and a lil software patch to go back to normal. Also frankly the effort is kinda wasted, "breaching" on other bands was never hard and with availability of cheap SDRs, easier than ever.

subscribed

Ouch, > new policy will not apply to gear that operates exclusively on amateur radio frequencies So almost everything is getting banned, at least the existing hardware.

phyzome

So that's... kind of all consumer electronics, at this point. (Because of Bluetooth and whatnot.)

seany

How does this even work with test gear? There's a millions tools that would violate this

tfwnopmt

For people that didn't read the article, listings will need to include the FCC ID. So most consumer goods will still be available.

nubinetwork

The purpose of the restriction is to keep people from using hacked baofengs to chat on bands a) they're not allowed to use unlicensed b) could potentially already be in use by another service eg EMS/fire/police.

slop

Amazon UK now requires ID for "bladed items". https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/amazon-uk-now-requires-p...

iamnothere

Does this now restrict ESP32s since some creative people have figured out how to use them as (limited) SDRs? Edit: as another commenter pointed out devices with an FCC ID will be fine (for now) which I assume covers these. And you can always DIY a frequency converter: https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...

zitterbewegung

I can see that Meshtastic devices could also be blocked. Also, many don't operate with the FCC rules on the frequencies used. https://meshtastic.org/docs/legal/

hawaiijoe

Nothing wrong with that.

RobotToaster

Who's going to be the first to vibe code an eBay alternative for radio gear?

behringer

More regulation. If it's not regulation it's more taxation.

krunck

It appears to be part of the "we can't trust anything from China" project. There do appear to be exceptions for low volume sellers.

superkuh

RIP all those human person made wideband low noise amplifier boards that cost $5. Now I'll have to buy a $50 minicircuits or whatever alternative with an FCC ID. Despite the fact that I'd only use the LNA for receive, it still could generate and amplifies RF not in the ham bands. So they'll certainly be banned. :\ eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above. The FCC document from page 97 on has these tables full of extremely inaccurate ass-covering data pretending that >80% of all electronics sellers that might be effected by these new FCC rules are large firms (>1000 people) and that's simply not true. If they counted ebay sellers there'd be more human sellers than firms by far.

0x1ch

Why is eBay acting as the FCC? I can still buy lasers that will rip through your retina in the blink of a eye from eBay (lol). The equipment is completely legal to own and operate, and transmit with the proper licensing (which is not required to purchase said equipment).

FabCH

To be fair to eBay, their banned items policy is quite extensive. And also for some reason explicitly lists „military aircraft and ships“. Which surely should be allowed just for the comedic value.

eddythompson80

I always found the difference between ham radio operators and computer hacker community interesting. There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed". Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.

grendelt

The upshot is there's been an incredible reduction in the amount of utter crap listed when searching for ham radio gear. Instead of countless pages of Baofengs and all manner of accessories, I can actually find some gear. When I first saw this shared on the ham radio email reflectors, I went to eBay to have a look. I was actually enticed to buy a radio I hadn't seen or considered prior. That posting is only visible now that the noise floor has dropped dramatically.

prometheus1992

not trying to be controversial here; but isn't it weird that you can buy semi automatic guns and there's restrictions on radio equipments bc these equipments can mess with the bandwidth used by public services - but similar arguments hold for guns as well.

mindslight

Given that the underlying motivation here isn't merely bigcorp aggressively following regulation (in which alternative marketplaces can spring up), but rather some arbitrary diktat from the regime for which enforcement will be gradually cranked up (physical reality, logic, and Constitutional rights be damned), the real question is what the overall eventual scope is here, in other words what it makes sense for hobbyists/DIYers to stock up on before the destructionists are able to fully strangle it. Definitely - LoRA/Meshtastic, SDR transmitters, cheap prepper radios that technically require a license to use, maybe even just cheap antennas that you could make yourself but would rather not have to? Maybe - ESP32, nRF and other competitively-priced wifi/2.4Ghz microcontrollers/devboards if the China Bad marketing chant really ramps up here? Especially with the recent AI-facilitated reverse engineering to gain SDR-ish functionality. Might have to worry about receive-only SDRs too, since it's not like these people really know the difference. That's what I can think of off the top of my head, but I've never been heavily into RF. Anything else?