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  #1  
Old 07-21-2016, 11:20 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Baofeng UV-5R HT - thoughts?

I just purchased a Baofeng UV-5R handheld 2m transceiver on Amazon.com, to use as a backup to my Icom IC-T22A HT. I would appreciate your thoughts on and opinions of this radio.

One thing I wonder about, however, is the transmitter's deviation setting. Are the settings programmed into the UV-5R usable for North American repeaters, or will I have problems with overdeviation? (I think the radio has only two deviation settings, wide and narrowband.) I ask this because I remember reading a review of the UV-5R a while back, in which a new user was in fact getting reports of his transmitted audio being "too loud" (which I took to mean the signal was overdeviating just short of chopping out of the repeater). Is this something worth being concerned about with the UV-5R?

Thanks much and 73.
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  #2  
Old 07-22-2016, 03:19 PM
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davet753 davet753 is offline
David Thomas
 
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I have two Baofengs (a UV5R and a BF-F8HP), and both are set to wide band. The 8 watt version has great audio, the UV5R was very low when I got it, and there is no mic gain adjustment. The hole on the case for the UV5R microphone is very tiny, and you can improve the transmitted audio by making the hole larger.

The Baofeng HT's lack a lot of features, the design of the menu system sucks, and the display is outdated. Despite that, for $35 they are one heck of a good deal. They work well, and accessories are super low priced compared to the competition.

Programming is a royal PIA, but you can download CHIRP for free and make it much less stressful. Just be sure before you program it to use the software to read the factory parameters and save them to a file on your computer.....that way you can go back to the factory settings as the menu option to do a "factory reset" doesn't really reset everything.

I also recommend going on amazon and purchasing some accessories. They have an external mic/speaker that you can get for less than $10, and the Nagoya NA771 whip antenna ($15) will beat the daylights out of the factory rubber duck. If you want to use a base antenna, beware the SMA adapter you need is exactly opposite the standard one used by everybody else.

For the money, you can't beat the Baofengs.

David KM4NYI
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  #3  
Old 07-23-2016, 07:07 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davet753 View Post
I have two Baofengs (a UV5R and a BF-F8HP), and both are set to wide band. The 8 watt version has great audio, the UV5R was very low when I got it, and there is no mic gain adjustment. The hole on the case for the UV5R microphone is very tiny, and you can improve the transmitted audio by making the hole larger.

The Baofeng HT's lack a lot of features, the design of the menu system sucks, and the display is outdated. Despite that, for $35 they are one heck of a good deal. They work well, and accessories are super low priced compared to the competition.

Programming is a royal PIA, but you can download CHIRP for free and make it much less stressful. Just be sure before you program it to use the software to read the factory parameters and save them to a file on your computer.....that way you can go back to the factory settings as the menu option to do a "factory reset" doesn't really reset everything.

I also recommend going on amazon and purchasing some accessories. They have an external mic/speaker that you can get for less than $10, and the Nagoya NA771 whip antenna ($15) will beat the daylights out of the factory rubber duck. If you want to use a base antenna, beware the SMA adapter you need is exactly opposite the standard one used by everybody else.

For the money, you can't beat the Baofengs.

David KM4NYI
The Baofeng UV-5R HT arrived here at my apartment this afternoon via USPS. The radio works, but as you said, programming it takes a lot of patience. The owner's manual is very poorly translated from Chinese, so I would suggest downloading the same manual as a .pdf file. The latter version was annotated by a ham in Indiana and is much easier to read than the original.

I placed an order for the Nagoya NA-771 dual-band whip antenna on Amazon.com just before writing this post. I'm sure this antenna will work much better for me, since I am having problems getting into the local repeater (about ten miles away in the next town south of here) with my Icom IC-T22A; the UV-5R just doesn't make it at all with the stock rubber duck. The IC-T22A only puts out 1.5 watts maximum power, whereas the Baofeng UV-5R has two power settings: 1 and five watts. With the Nagoya whip and running 5 watts, I should be able to access the local machine with few if any problems; if one watt won't do it, five watts probably will. I used to be able to get into the repeater just fine with 1.5 watts with my Icom HT, but something must have changed somewhere between the repeater and my apartment because now, accessing the machine is hit-or-miss, and it only works in one or two places in the apartment.

One of the few things I don't care for with the UV-5R is the antenna connector. It isn't the BNC connector one would expect to find on an HT, but it is a special type of threaded connector that no other HT manufacturer uses. This means I cannot use the telescoping 3/8-wave whip I used with my Icom HT, but must use the matching whip that was made to work with Baofeng HTs. If you want to use a BNC-equipped rubber duck or an external base-station 2-meter antenna with a UV-5R (or any other Baofeng HT), you must get the special adapter.

I am downright surprised that Baofeng did not include this adapter with the UV-5R HT. It wouldn't have added that much more to the price, and it certainly would make things easier for hams with standard BNC-equipped antennas if and/or when they find out the rubber duck included with the radio doesn't work very well. Rubber duck antennas, which are a very poor match from an SWR standpoint for the output of any HT, are good for use in areas very close to local repeaters, but not if you are any distance from them. I am about ten miles or so from the nearest repeater, so I need to use an antenna with some gain, such as a telescoping 3/8-wave whip, to put any kind of decent signal into that machine from this distance. Hopefully the Nagoya whip, used with my UV-5R, will solve the problem. My next post will document the results of my tests of that antenna; as I said, I am fully expecting to put a decent signal into the local repeater with it and 5 watts input.
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Last edited by Jeffhs; 07-25-2016 at 09:50 PM.
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  #4  
Old 07-23-2016, 08:46 PM
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jr_tech jr_tech is offline
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Which repeater are you trying to hit and have you tried any of the UHF repeaters in the county? I sometimes have better luck hitting the UHF repeaters when using the short stock Baofeng rubber duck.

https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeate...id=39&loc=Lake

Which model do you have... as far as I know the UV-5R only has 2 power settings 1 & 5 Watts. My BF-8HP has a third setting for outputs of 7 W on UHF and 8 W on VHF.

Yes, manual programming is a PITA.

jr
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  #5  
Old 07-23-2016, 09:34 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jr_tech View Post
Which repeater are you trying to hit and have you tried any of the UHF repeaters in the county? I sometimes have better luck hitting the UHF repeaters when using the short stock Baofeng rubber duck.

https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeate...id=39&loc=Lake

Which model do you have... as far as I know the UV-5R only has 2 power settings 1 & 5 Watts. My BF-8HP has a third setting for outputs of 7 W on UHF and 8 W on VHF.

Yes, manual programming is a PITA.

jr
I am trying to access the Painesville 147.81-.21 repeater, N8BC, 110.9 Hz subaudible tone.

I have the Baofeng UV-5R which, as you said, only offers two transmitter power options, one and five watts.

Doggone it, if my UV-5R covered 220 MHz (unfortunately, it doesn't; it only covers 2m and UHF), I could try to get into the repeater here in Fairport Harbor which operates in that band.

That's a good one. I've lived here in Fairport Harbor sixteen years, and never knew, until just now, there was a 220-MHz repeater in town--just a hop, skip and a jump from my apartment to boot.

BTW, what is your amateur callsign, and how long have you been in the hobby? I was first licensed as WN8NHV in 1972, passed Technician three years later, and General ten years after that; I've been General class WB8NHV ever since mid-1985.
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Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.

Last edited by Jeffhs; 07-23-2016 at 09:41 PM.
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  #6  
Old 07-23-2016, 11:29 PM
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jr_tech jr_tech is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffhs View Post
I am trying to access the Painesville 147.81-.21 repeater, N8BC, 110.9 Hz subaudible tone.

I have the Baofeng UV-5R which, as you said, only offers two transmitter power options, one and five watts.

snip!

BTW, what is your amateur callsign, and how long have you been in the hobby?
Are you sure that repeater is active? it doesn't seem to be on the list that I linked to.

I misspoke about the power... I have a UV-B5 which has 1 W and 5 Watts... I think that the UV-5R has 1 W and 4 Watts.

I have been a ham only a little over a year, passed tech and general on the same day... fun way to spend a rainy Saturday morning! For security reasons, I don't list my call letters on a very open public forum, but my prefix is KG7.

73s,
jr

Last edited by jr_tech; 07-23-2016 at 11:56 PM.
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  #7  
Old 07-24-2016, 01:40 PM
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davet753 davet753 is offline
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Several manufacturers are moving towards SMA connectors for HT antennas. I bought a Yaesu VX8-DR last month, and it uses an SMA connector (male instead of female like the Baofeng).

I use the Nagoya NA771 on my 5 watt Baofeng, and use the 771R on my 8 watt. The 771R is telescopic, so it's easier to carry around by simply collapsing it. Either way, the Nagoya's perform much better than the stock rubber ducks.

I'm going to pick up some 300-ohm twinlead at the upcoming Huntsville hamfest, and plan to make a roll-up J-Pole to use for my HT's. The Yaesu I bought is a quad bander (2, 6, 220, 440), so I think I'll make one for each band. From what I have heard, a roll-up J-pole hanging from a tree limb will outperform even the best HT antennas.

If you want to use a regular PL259 antenna connector, I'd recommend using a pigtail type such as the one in this link: https://www.amazon.com/DHT-Electroni...s=sma+to+pl259

The pigtail type is less stressful on the HT connector than the adapter when you have a big coax attached to it.
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  #8  
Old 07-29-2016, 08:22 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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I received the Nagoya whip antenna (non-telescoping) the other day. As VK member Dave (davet753, KM4NYI) said, this whip works 100 times better than the stock rubber duck; on the FM broadcast band I was hearing stations I don't normally hear on any other FM radio in my apartment, including my Zenith C-845.

However, the Nagoya whip fails miserably on transmit, at least in my area. I tried and tried again, with the Baofeng HT set at high power (4 watts), to hit the nearest repeater, with no luck at all. I am sure the HT is working, as I listened to it on another HT--the transmitter and even the offset are working fine (I tried the radio on both simplex and +/-600kHz transmit offset).

I guess this must be a function of my location in relation to that of the repeater I am trying to use. Even my Icom IC-T22a doesn't reach this repeater anymore; I used to be able to hit the machine with no problems, using only 1.5 watts and a 3/8-wave telescoping whip antenna. If not, the only other thing I can figure is there may be obstructions between my apartment and the repeater. The last time I tried to access the machine in question (N8BC/R, 147.81-21, +600 kHz offset) to check into a local radio club net last night, the NCS (net control station) immediately said that he was hearing a station that was very noisy and unreadable (I am reasonably sure he was referring to me, although the NCS did not mention my call sign). "Increase power, try another location" were his two suggestions, neither of which applied to me since I was already transmitting at the maximum power my IC-T22a offers (1.5 watts) and I was operating my HT in a cramped area of my bedroom, so I couldn't move around much if at all (my apartment is very small).

Chalk this one up to the fact that I live in an RF fringe area, at least where 2m FM amateur radio repeaters are concerned. The only other alternative I have at this point is to do my hamming using Echolink, an amateur radio linking app developed by a ham in New England (Jonathan Taylor, K1RFD). I installed this app on both my desktop computer and my tablet computer. I'm glad I did, because the problems I just mentioned have precluded any further amateur operations using RF-based amateur radio gear.

Oh well. It was a lot of fun while it lasted (16 years). At my previous residence, a three-bedroom house in a Cleveland suburb, I had a 100-watt Icom IC-725 and an all-band dipole, and I was working the world, especially on 30-meter CW. Seems every time I called CQ on thirty meters, someone would answer me.

There is one bright spot, however, in that Echolink hamming does not cause TV interference or radio interference. I am also considering the fact that EL is completely digital, which brings my amateur radio operations fully into the 21st century. No need to worry about lightning striking antennas, either, since EL does not use them; it is purely a digital system using streaming audio. It's not true ham radio by any means, but when you are in a situation like mine, you take whatever solution you can find.

73,
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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.

Last edited by Jeffhs; 07-29-2016 at 08:43 PM.
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  #9  
Old 07-29-2016, 10:47 PM
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jr_tech jr_tech is offline
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When was the last time that you were able to get good communication through the repeater with your older HT?

I am confused about its location... you said Painsville, but the list that I linked to said Mentor, which is more distant from your location...has it recently moved? perhaps that explains why it is now weaker on your older HT. Or perhaps the list that I linked to is just in error?

Have you checked your ctcs tone?... just hit menu and 1 3 to view the tone that is set... exit to get back to main display.

Have you tried any of the UHF repeaters?

Have you tried going outside?

IMHO, it is too early to give up!

73s,
jr
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Old 07-30-2016, 05:11 PM
madlabs madlabs is offline
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I have several and 100% agree with Dave, perfect analysis of the pro's and cons. My 8 watter gave it up but the YL's has survived. At the price though they just can't be beat, drop it in the toilet or leave it on top of the car, who cares?

Quote:
Originally Posted by davet753 View Post
I have two Baofengs (a UV5R and a BF-F8HP), and both are set to wide band. The 8 watt version has great audio, the UV5R was very low when I got it, and there is no mic gain adjustment. The hole on the case for the UV5R microphone is very tiny, and you can improve the transmitted audio by making the hole larger.

The Baofeng HT's lack a lot of features, the design of the menu system sucks, and the display is outdated. Despite that, for $35 they are one heck of a good deal. They work well, and accessories are super low priced compared to the competition.

Programming is a royal PIA, but you can download CHIRP for free and make it much less stressful. Just be sure before you program it to use the software to read the factory parameters and save them to a file on your computer.....that way you can go back to the factory settings as the menu option to do a "factory reset" doesn't really reset everything.

I also recommend going on amazon and purchasing some accessories. They have an external mic/speaker that you can get for less than $10, and the Nagoya NA771 whip antenna ($15) will beat the daylights out of the factory rubber duck. If you want to use a base antenna, beware the SMA adapter you need is exactly opposite the standard one used by everybody else.

For the money, you can't beat the Baofengs.

David KM4NYI
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  #11  
Old 07-31-2016, 01:10 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
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I am still trying to make a contact through the local repeater, using my Baofeng UV-5R. It doesn't work. I have set the CTCSS tone correctly (110.9 Hz) and am transmitting at the HT's maximum output (4 watts). The repeater doesn't respond, although it does when I use my Icom IC-T22a 1.5-watt HT. I am using the HT inside my apartment, which has metal screens in the front windows. I am wondering if those screens could be blocking my HT's signals (both HTs) from reaching the repeater.

73,
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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.

Last edited by Jeffhs; 07-31-2016 at 01:40 PM. Reason: Added information
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  #12  
Old 07-31-2016, 07:14 PM
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davet753 davet753 is offline
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Location: Knoxville, TN
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Jeff, have you thought about using a 2 meter J-pole antenna? I used mine for a while just sitting in my bedroom window, and have excellent results. They're thin and pretty unobtrusive. You could even make a J-pole for your HT with a length of 300 ohm twin lead (like we used to use on TV antennas). A google search for "roll up j pole antenna" will give you lots of options for an antenna that you could easily pin up in front of a window.

For less than $20, you can get a small mag-mount mobile antenna for the Baofeng on Amazon, and put it in the middle of a shallow metal cookie sheet. The cookie sheet performs like a ground plane, and will help.

I would also take the Baofeng outside and walk around some with it, just to see if the problem really is poor indoor signal. Maybe try the rubber duck and the Nagoya just for a comparison.

Just a couple of ideas....I hope you don't give up on it
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Old 08-14-2016, 01:36 PM
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As long as there are still good brands of ham radio equipment available, from companies that support radio activities, hamfests, and DXpeditions, I will stay away from the cheap Chinese stuff. The ONLY thing they have to recommend them is that they are CHEAP, no other reason at all. My ham radio hobby is worth more to me than needing to own a $40 transceiver.
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Old 08-14-2016, 05:41 PM
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I have loved my UV-5R. When I was in St. Augustine at the fort, I was able to hit a nearby repeater without ease and talk to a friend over in Flagler. Crystal clear both ways. It worked very well.

I really recommend getting a USB programming cable and download the daily for CHIRP. It will make programming it SO much better!

I would definitely prefer a Yaesu HT over the UV-5R, but for something cheap I can take wherever and not worry about it, it works. The FM commercial radio option, has actually been useful a few times, and it does sound clear on my ear piece (don't use the included ear piece, it sucks, get something better, I prefer the in ear tube types).

As for the included antenna? Don't use it, get something better. The included antenna is so cheap, they break easily internally and become useless, even shorting out. And if you get a better antenna, be prepared to use an O-Ring, some antennas leave a little gap between the HT and the antenna base. I use an O-Ring around it to keep moisture out.
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  #15  
Old 08-14-2016, 07:18 PM
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davet753 davet753 is offline
David Thomas
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV View Post
As long as there are still good brands of ham radio equipment available, from companies that support radio activities, hamfests, and DXpeditions, I will stay away from the cheap Chinese stuff. The ONLY thing they have to recommend them is that they are CHEAP, no other reason at all. My ham radio hobby is worth more to me than needing to own a $40 transceiver.
You are right, other than price there is no other reason to buy a Baeofeng.

However, a big $ investment for a radio hinders people from getting into the hobby, and if more folks don't start getting active in ham radio, the hobby as we know it today is going to be in big trouble. I know clubs who buy the Baofengs by the case and sell to new licensees at (or below) cost just to get them on the air. The newbies that get them invariably end up purchasing a Yaesu, Icom, or Kenwood later on as they grow into the hobby.

I do agree with your point about buying from companies who support the hobby. I own a Yaesu FT450D HF rig, Yaesu FTM400D 2 meter Fusion rig, and a Yaesu VX8DR HT, and a Yaesu 2900 in one of my cars. If Yaesu is ticked off at me for owning a $35 Baeofeng after spending what I've spent on Yaesu gear, I can't help it
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