Hi everyone. I am Pablo Gigy Gregoret, I work with Wilson’s Phalarope ecology. We are tagging birds and also working on the installation of Motus Station for the migration connectivity understanding of the species.
I need to buy for today (to get the payment before the US Fiscal Year) 13 Funcube Pro Plus Dongles for dual stations that we are installing in Laguna Mar Chiquita (Córdoba, Argentina).
I want good quality dongles. Which site do you recommend to me?
I just purchased 4 FunCubes from the UK (ML&S Martin Lynch & Sons Ltd; tony@hamradio.co.uk) and had them shipped to the US (Maryland). It was $600 for the FunCubes and the US Government charged us $1,700 for tariffs and import taxes. So if you are importing things from the UK keep that in mind. There is a waiver process but so far that has been unsuccessful. You won’t know how much you are paying in tariffs until they get to the US, which is very difficult when on a budget or spending grant funds. I have not yet found a distributor in the US but there seem to be some options in Canada (maybe Compudata).
If anyone else has suggestions for getting FunCubes in the US, or without tariffs, please share with the group.
Best regards,
Jan Schipper
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory
This is also the approach we use at Birds Canada, though we often use an intermediary – Compudata – who purchases, configures, and tests them prior to resale.
I’m not sure if that helps you in the US…
There is (or was; not sure if this is an option still) a US reseller: RFS Scientific. @AdamDSmith would have a better idea if this is still a viable option for purchasing the US
There are no US resellers that I’m aware of at the moment. RFS Scientific is no longer in business.
We either use Martin Lynch and Sons or the Funcube dongle website. Tariffs from the UK should be capped at around 10-15% these days, so that bill that Jan noted is absolutely outrageous and must be some kind of error on the part of the shipping company, though I don’t know how to correct that error. Compudata could be a good choice (though still likely tariffed) if they still sell individual FUNcubes.
We purchased 8 from the FUNcube dongle website (http://funcubedongle.com/) this past September and also had to pay tariffs but it was capped at almost exactly 10%. I believe our total was about $1800 and the tariff was $178. They did ship very quickly and otherwise we’ve been happy with them. And I’m not sure if we paid a tariff through the UK or Canada because it actually shipped FedEx through Canada but the product is manufactured in UK. Either way, we didn’t pay more than 10% and couldn’t find a better option.