Don’t buy…waste of money…deaf as a post.
That is all.
But by the cringe it’s cheap :-s 'spose you get what you pay for…
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You must have a duff one Andy… mine works well although I prefer my VX8… Richard…
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I have a few. They’re fine, if not almost disposable. Recommend something better for main HT, but at their pricepoint these are good to scatter about so you always have one nearby - one in office desk, one in car, one in the garage… FWIW one of mine is a UV-B6, which seems to be a little better RX-wise, though I prefer the display of the UV-5R
I don’t have one but I know a man on Snowdon who has one and couldn’t hear people calling and calling.
John was 57 with me and he couldn’t hear me yet Carolyn on Gd-002 could hear me at 59+++ when I used a rubber duck and 0.5w.
They may be cheap but it’s money wasted when you can buy arafio that receives as well as transmits for not much more.
They’re cheap becacause they’re junk
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@KQ2RP isn’t the Squelch is a menu setting?? … probably needs messed with / adjusted…
Tell JOHN to press the monitor button…
RJ
No matter how little money something costs. It will always be a too expensive good if it doesn’t fullfill the intended function or service.
I won a Baofeng UV B5 in the EA2 area SOTA day party and after using it no more than 6 or 8 times it stopped transmitting any reasonable power.
I don’t think I’ll take it to be repaired, as it will be a waste of time and money because I’m pretty sure another failure will come up pretty soon after repair.
Since 1984 I’ve owned 3 Yaesu Co. HH. Yaesu FT-470, Yaesu FT23R and SOMMERKAMP SK-205RH.
Great reliable pieces of radios all of them.
Several of these modern chineese ‘bargains’ are in fact scam, as they don’t do what they say they would do for you.
Cheers,
Guru
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If the operator has enable RX tones then the Radio won’t hear anything…
The radios do have a complicated menu structure that baffles most of us at some point…
RJ
I’m sure my VX170 was made in China and it’s brilliant. Mine is 9 years old now, still going strong on the original battery. It lives in the outside pocket of a rucksack with no case. The audio is loud, the battery lasts forever, it works on summits with lots of commercial transmitters present. It is for SOTA work unbeatable in my view.
Cost £83 which is 3x a UV plus some chips and a pint. But it works and keeps working so it’s money well spent.
I agree!
Richard G3CWI started a new topic about the Yaesu VX-3.
Then I had the chance to compare the Yaesu VX-3 with a Baofeng (UV-5R) and my thoughts are here:
Recently I had the chance to compare the Icom-V80 with a Baofeng (U???) in a noisy rf environment (CT/ES-001) and the results were the same.
The Icom doesn’t saturate the front-end. So, many stations were received in the Icom while in the Baofeng no signal was heard.
So, Andy, MM0FMF you’re right!
73 de Pedro, CT1DBS/CU3HF
My bigger worry is that because these are so cheap, young people and newcomers to the hobby will buy them. For those of us who are old enough and ugly enough to know what we are doing, then fine, buy and throw it in the car “for emergencies”. But you’d better pray it’s not a matter of life or death if you intend to depend on one.
Anything I can do to make people who don’t know any better think hard before buying one of these is time well spent.
It’s my primary 2m monitor rig - if I am planning on working 2m either fm or Ssb I use my 817.
If and when I upgrade my license to use APRS I will upgrade to have both capabilities in 1 device.
W
VK1FWBD
Exactly, but they might learn why the are useless prehsps. For APRS they can be driven rather effectively for one useful purpose.
I’d like a HT that could do SSB if one exists?!
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On the way home from a vacation, I detoured to the American Radio Relay League’s mother ship location and had a nice tour. One part of that was meeting and chatting with the fellow who does product review lab testing, Bob WB1GCM, who’s result’s show up in ARRL’s journal QST. Bob’s comment about Bofang’s transceivers is that many of them transmit out-of-band spurs that violate the US’s FCC specs.
I have more than one and they works greatfully…
You should have hung around longer Andy 
John switched to his FT817 on 2m later on (gosh, he was up there a long long time!). His audio was miles better then for sure. (Listening on Hack Green from work)
In the past I owned a SSB HT: Belcom LS-202E.
Not the best RX but better than any Baofeng, etc…
From time to time it appear in the ebay.
73 de Pedro, CT1DBS/CU3HF
I’m afraid that we’re seeing this on other forums, (fora?). Their venture into amateur radio begins and ends with a cheap Chinese hand-held and their local repeater.
Yes. Sounds like operator error. As I said, they work fine. Anyone who claims they don’t work or fail at a high rate probably doesn’t have direct experience with them or hasn’t taken the time to set them up correctly. They do have their quirks and shortcomings and as a main HT in the longrun, there are better choices. For spares, they are fine. They are not Kenwood or Yaesu in terms of performance, but no one said they were. In my experience, many local hams have started off with these and used them as springboards to get on the air and eventually gravitate to better equipment. YMMV.
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Shame to hear that Andy - the older 2W UV-3R had a rediculously sensitive receiver side in it - far better than the rigs from the “big 3” that other club members had at the time, when we compared them in Oz.
The downside of that model was that the front end seemed to overload quite easily. Sounds like Boafeng went too far the other way with the UV-5R then.
It’s good to see that the price of the entry level HTs from the “big 3” dropped drastically once the “Chinese-cheapies” came out, so it’s now possible to get a reasonable HT at an affordable price for someone entering the hobby.
But you do still get what you pay for when we look at the disposable HTs out of China.
Ed.