Baofeng UV-5R

Anyone tried one of these yet?

http://tiny.cc/jssidw

1800 mAh battery as standerd is nice.

Battery eliminator about a tenner
Spare battery about a tenner.

May be worth a punt.

Mike
2E0YYY

In reply to 2E0YYY:
Cheapest I’ve seen them is £24.

You get what you pay for.

Think I’ll stick with my little Yaesu.

But if/when I drop it in a puddle, sit on it, fill it up with rain water - or snow, crush it under a big rock or simply leave it on top of a hill…then I might regret not having one of these cheapo Chinese jobbies.

In reply to 2E0YYY:

I’m not sure how much they’ve improved, but my UV3-R is horiffic!

  • If there’s a pager anywhere on earth then it’s unusable.
  • The squelch, even on the lowest setting, stops strong signals
  • Power out on mine is ~1W
  • It’s deaf on 2m
  • Virtually deaf on 70cm

Lots of reviews online say things like “considering the price it’s great,” but I don’t understand the point of something totally useless, even if it’s free!

If anyone wants it BTW, then i’m happy to send it to you for nothing! Grab a “bargain”… you’ll probably send it me back!

Rant over! :slight_smile:

Rob

In reply to G7LAS:

600km DX with Bao UV-3

In reply to EA4WT:

Mine is the older, one frequency read out version. I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not. You could show me one dx-ing a thousand miles… this one’s still useless!

No-one even wants it for free!

In reply to G7LAS:

Not sure what is wrong with yours but mine is excellent - also the older version. It has seen service on quite a few SOTA activations and works really well.

73

Richard
G3CWI

In reply to G3CWI:

Perhaps i’ve a dud one then Richard… sounds about right! :slight_smile:

In reply to 2E0YYY:

Anyone tried one of these yet?

Where to buy - FINE JEWELRY TOP BLOG

I’ve seen rumblings on one of the Yahoo groups that the 5R has a design flaw that makes it about 2kHz off frequency on VHF.

Julian, G4ILO

In reply to G4ILO:

Hi Julian,

Yeah, I’ve read loads about this rig and it seems to be buggy. Loads of stuff on You Tube.

Excellent testing and review by PD0AC

And some of the identified bugs here

VFM, it must be top of the heap, however, my Wouxun has given brilliant service for a couple of years and do I need another HT to add to the ever growing collection! However, if I were to buy one, I’d be tempted to wait a few months for a new batch from the factory.

BTW, if anyone fancies one, the data cable is a must!

73 Mike
2E0YYY

In reply to 2E0YYY:

BTW, if anyone fancies one, the data cable is a must!

…and so is a friendly friend who can do all the programming for you :wink:

In reply to G7LAS:

If anyone wants it BTW, then i’m happy to send it to you for nothing!
Grab a “bargain”… you’ll probably send it me back!

It’s a done deal! Details on QRZ.com - I’ll gladly cover the postage by whatever means you’d like!

In reply to All:

I bought a pair of UV-3R (the dual display ones) for Geoff 2E0BTR and I to use for talkback between the HF/VHF positions while of the hill. They are (by and large) a very useful little radio. We use them as “ham-band PMR446’s” with those little bullet antennas. The big caveat for me is the way the squelch works. The radio compares the strength of the RX signal on the channel in use with whatever is on an adjacent channel - if the difference is small, it mutes the audio. The problem here is that a very strong local signal will generate sidebands sufficiently far away from the main channel that the radio sees it as noise on the adjacent channel, this tripping the squelch. This is a momentary action and is an irritation, rather than a show stopper - it’s still possible to get well over a 90% copy.

I use mine increasingly as a generally useful, pocket size radio, on the hill, around the house, etc etc. I even sometimes set the shack radio to monitor whatever I want to monitor then plug in one of those cheap broadcast FM transmitters used with MP3 players and the like. The 3R then sits in my pocket in B/C mode, allowing me to monitor things with the serious radios and antennas while pottering in the garden.

73 de Dave M0MYA.