Baofeng UV5

UV-5R-2 Deaf?

Hi Andy,
Sorry you couldn’t hear me from GW/NW-001 Snowdon for an S2S on 11-04-17. VHF was an afterthought but one that unexpectedly turned out to be valuable as far as the QSO count was concerned. Alternatively you could have got me on 80m CW or SSB (or 40m maybe) or on 145.400 with my FT817ND during the final 13 QSO’s. 160m & 80m were the main focuses.

When I set the UV-5R-2 up, the squelch was set to ‘1’ with no receive tone set. I was pressing the de-squelch button often, especially when trying (and failing) to get M6AIF into the log but there were strong local stations calling me two or three at a time. Some of these were in valleys below me, some as close as 6 miles and you would probably not hear the majority of them. If you hear only dead air, you wouldn’t truly know the best time to call and many of their signals would overwhelm yours without you knowing. I remember that unlike SSB, FM captures the strongest signals. Only the stronger of two signals at or near the same frequency will be demodulated.

Having used a lot of battery on HF with 50 Watts, I started VHF with the UV-5R-2 and it’s own battery, which is a capable 1.8 Ah unit. A little later, a change was made back to the FT817 with the reserve 2.2 Ah, which had already been partly depleted on HF after the main battery. By the time I was finished on NW1, the 5Ah and the UV-5R-2 were both flat with the 2.2Ah 95% down. (VHF 2m-FM 5W QSO’s: 24 with the UV-5R-2 and 13 with the FT817ND).

The UV-5R is just intended as a last ditch 4-QSO reserve rig that I don’t normally expect to need. Only under exceptional circumstances (for example GM summits in very remote areas or maybe abroad) would I risk doing SOTA with just an HF rig. The UV-5R-2 weighs just 200gm (8oz) - much less than the IC-E90’s (290gm), that I took out of the rucksack along with some other stuff immediately before leaving Pen-y-Pass.

If you think I’m weight obsessed, you’d be dead right! If I didn’t apply strict rules to every item I have to carry (including myself), then using the handheld weight difference, a 25-pound load would become 36-pounds, which would put some of the stuff I do beyond my capabilities. Also, if I hadn’t used the UV-5R-2 to take the load off my batteries on this occasion, up to 24 stations would not be in the NW1-VHF log.

All that said - fair enough; having had it only 8 months, I don’t have ultimate confidence in the UV-5R-2 yet and acknowledge that they are generally regarded as junk. On the plus side, as well as being ‘throwaway cheap’ (you can’t repair them anyway), they’re light and run 5 Watts. The price of 22 GBP doesn’t help the psychology. If they had come onto the market at say £100, then fewer people would buy one but generally the ops that did would be prouder of their purchase and less likely to run it down.

I respect the point of view of others but to me it’s weight that comes first. I bought the rig with eyes open, already knowing its anecdotal shortcomings but weight matters a great deal when you are routinely doing high-power HF work and I have no regrets about either taking or using the rig in these circumstances. I will continue to use it as a second-line rig when the need arises but unlike the UV-3R’s which I use every day, I may not buy several of them. Neither would I like to sell the one I’ve got but thanks for the offer

I am not short of alternative handhelds as follows: IC-E90 (4-bander); VX150 (2m mono-band); an old IC-2E and an ICT-7E. (I had a VX170 and a ICT-8E - now both sold). Even the more expensive rigs in this list have their shortcomings and I’m pretty sure all of these handhelds have been ‘wiped out’ at some time or another near VHF TX’s, for example GW/NW-070 Great Orme.

As you will know, in each situation activators have to make difficult choices. Each of us will make different decisions on the same issue. With HF QRO on Snowdon, I just didn’t want to carry any more weight on a 10-pointer. With the proviso that a rig actually works reasonably well, weight comes first and it’s my first call when I look at the spec. of any radio or other bit of gear that I might end up carrying.
…………………………………………………

Deafness can be diagnosed with a controlled bench check and despite the fact that I didn’t think my UV-5R-2 was deaf, I arranged for it to be tested and compared with other rigs.

Below are the results of tests carried out by a licenced amateur who is also a retired radio engineer. He acts as the SARS technical manager. The Baofeng UV-5R-2 was compared with a UV-5R, my VX150, an FT817, an IC92D and two examples of FT290’s. Since Excel doesn’t always reproduce particularly well, results are re-typed for the reflector.

VHF RECEIVER SENSITIVITY COMPARISONS
Conditions:
Test Eqpt: Marconi 2955 Test Set. Marconi Sig. Gen.
Unsquelched and squelched values are compared with the handbook spec.
Squelched tests: Rigs set to ‘1’ (lowest) or rotated just beyond onset point as appropriate.

Results:
Units: Microvolts for 12dB SINAD

  1. UV-5R: 0.14 (desquelched); 0.10 (min squelch); 0.2 (handbook). Tester’s Baofeng
  2. UV-5R-2: 0.13 (desquelched); 0.10 (min squelch); 0.2 (handbook). Rig used on GW/NW1.
  3. VX150: 0.15 (desquelched); 0.10 (min squelch); 0.16 (handbook). G4YSS Vertex (Yaesu)
  4. FT817: 0.17 (desquelched); 0.17 (min squelch); 0.2 (handbook). Tester’s Yaesu
  5. IC92D: No test desquelched; 0.09 (min squelch); 0.14 (handbook). Tester’s Icom
  6. FT290: 0.23 (desquelched); no test (min squelch); 0.25 (handbook). Yaesu
  7. FT290: 0.20 (desquelched); no test (min squelch). Mutek front end.

VHF RECEIVER ADJACENT CHANNEL (Front end blocking) COMPARISONS
Conditions:
This test was devised due to the non-availability of RF Hybrid eqpt.
Test Eqpt: Marconi 2955 Test Set.
Marconi and Farnell Sig. Gens fed into ‘T’ piece via two Hewlett Packard 3dB attenuators
Sig Gen connected to ‘T’ piece - Port 1. Sig gen was set to 145.625
Test set connected to ‘T’ piece - Port 2. Rig was set to receive on 145.600
Sig. gen. o/p on 145.625 was increased until onset of blocking (of ‘wanted’ signal).
Recorded values below take attenuators into account.

Results:
Units: Microvolts for 12dB SINAD

  1. UV-5R: 360 microvolts on 145.625 for onset of blocking on 145.600
  2. UV-5R-2: 250 microvolts on 145.625 for onset of blocking on 145.600. GW/NW1 rig.
  3. VX150: 75 microvolts on 145.625 for onset of blocking on 145.600
  4. FT817: 350 microvolts on 145.625 for onset of blocking on 145.600
  5. IC92D: 360 microvolts on 145.625 for onset of blocking on 145.600
  6. FT290: Not tested (Testers rig)
  7. FT290: Not tested (Club member’s rig after Mutek repair)

For comparison the standardised signal for an ‘S’ meter response of S9 is 50 microvolts

General:
Tests were not intended to be exhaustive and results are for guidance only.
All tests were carried out on all rigs within a two hour period using an identical setup.
No other variations of receive overload tests were carried out.
No TX testing was done but that is not the issue here.

I hope people will draw their own conclusions but in these limited tests, the UV-5R-2 compares acceptably well with the other radios tested. If not the rig, maybe it’s the operator who’s deaf? Last hearing test was 1956.

Hope we have better luck for an S2S next time.
73, John.

PS:
Yes, I am complaining! The £10 Pen-y-Pass parking fee is the highest I’ve ever come across and 2% of my car value. At the 2% rate some might be paying £150 or more for parking? Also £10 is half a new UV-5R-2 :wink:

Above: UV-5R-2 and FT817ND on Snowdon 11-April-17

10 Likes

Hello John,
I was monitoring on the Hack Green Web SDR during your 2-m sessions using the Baofeng and the FT817. You were certainly kept pretty busy. My one comment comparing the two rigs would be that, as often seems the case with the Baofengs and their ilk, the modulation was much lower (by at least a factor of 2, likely three) than the FT817. This meant you were a lot harder to copy on the Baofeng. On the Yaesu you sounded great. I’m sorry I didn’t keep a recording for you.
73, Simon

Hi all,

Well all rigs tested seem to have similar basic sensitivity and most are not too far apart on blocking. So unless you believe that there is a10 - 20 dB variation from one to another coming out of the factory there has to be another reason.

Could the deafness be as one poster has alluded to, the little dual band “antennas” supplied. When hand-helds only worked on one band the shortened antennas were resonant and worked OK. To get dual band operation involves some compromises. My experience is that the supplied antenna makes getting into the local repeater all but impossible. An 18 inch whip makes the repeater access easy and signals received are correspondingly much better.

A Slim Jim made from 300 ohm ribbon is a useful light weight signal booster to have in the pack.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

Hi Simon,

Thanks for that info. You were one of two people to report low or poor audio when I was using the UV-5R-2. I don’t have it in my possession to look at just at present but I seem to remember the hole for letting in the audio through the front cabinet to the electret was tiny. Far smaller than I would think efficient unless you get the angle just right and on target.

Looking at my photo above you can see how small the hole is. I assume that is the mic. I would be 99% sure. If so, I will drill it out to around 2.5mm which might make a significant difference. Also I will check the rig setting for ‘Wide’ / 'Narrow. I think it’s set to narrow which might not help this cause.

I have a few Jingtong JT208’s; cheapo Chinese 2m rigs which I converted to Li-Po. For some reason, maybe because they were made for use on Chinese building sites, these come with no hole at all and drilling carefully through the cabinet in the recommended place gives a very dramatic improvement in TX audio. I think we may be in similar territory here. Further investigation is required. Maybe the UV-5R came with a speaker/ mic, can’t remember but if it did, that might help to solve it. I also have a Chinese X1M HF QRP rig and that needed the drill taking to it for a vast improvement. Seems bizarre but true.

As per your observation, the FT817ND is in another class entirely, along with my IC706-2G. Both these rigs have been the subject of countless compliments for audio quality since I started SOTA. BBC quality has been mentioned a few times.

73, John.

I am adding some late test results for my UV-5R-2 as regards deviation.

When set to:
Narrow…peak deviation was + /- 2.3khz
Wide…peak deviation was +/- 4.5 Khz

The standard for VHF at 12.5 khz channel spacing (two metres) is 2.5khz peak. I normally set to narrow but I can’t yet confirm the setting on Snowdon. However I’m pretty sure it was set to narrow.
John

Thanks Ron,

Quality control/ sample testing? Maybe but not the two tested which seemed to be fairly similar. The more sensitive one was less good in the blocking tests; something that might be expected.

Yes, looking at the thing, it does seem rather small but the dual band antenna was in a poly-bag at the time. I was using a J-fed half-wave vertical; a home-brew one I’ve had for years. Handhelds are not really designed to be used in this way. If there was undetected ‘RF rubbish’ knocking around, a half wave would drag more of it in, so I keep an open mind.

Looking at my summit photos, I can’t see evidence of transmitting masts in any of them. There’s something on the station platform but it looks like a lamp post.

All the best, John.

My Baofeng results…your mileage may vary…

On summits with no other RF sources in sight my Baofeng works OK.

However, I have been on a number of summits when the UV-5R front end was being overloaded by a cell site or repeater…some kind of line-of-site transmitter. When overload occurs you can’t hear anything until the transmitter(s) stop transmitting. Then if u are quick, and lucky, you can squeeze a QSO in.

I have also listened to others calling endlessly on their Baofeng while on a summit and multiple people were calling them… they never heard the stations calling them.

Moving around and moving away from the transmitter can help at times. A gain antenna just makes the overload problem worse in my experience. That may not be true with a highly directional yagi…TBD

I have had similar problems a very few times with my VX-170…but it rarely happens compared to the Baofeng.

As a result I only use the Baofeng on long hikes where weight is an issue and RF isn’t.

Pete
WA7JTM

Something worth thinking about in terms of antennas.

May people know about the Arrow portable yagi antenna for Satellite work. They also make a 3 and 4 element 2m yagis (no 70cm elements) and similar 70cm yagis with 3/5/7 elements. I believe they are the split boom variety for portability. Either would be a vast improvement on the stock antenna, or even a 1/4wave or 1/2 wave radiator. Obviously the operator would need to rotate said antenna as it is directional, but this is also useful as you can use the nulls on that beam to cancel out any local interference issues. These are popular with NA sota activators and particularly useful for S2S contacts, as long as you know where to point.

Just a thought.

Hi John what’s the switch on the front of your 817 mic please?

1 Like

Hi Andy,
It’s the CW key. A miniature toggle switch, RS Components stock No 317-033. Left for dashes, right for dots and biased off in the centre. It’s wired in parallel with the up/ down mic buttons which are very difficult to use in their CW mode.
73, John

Hi Pete,

Despite there being no sightings of anything nearby, I am keeping an open mind. Many activators have been plagued by nearby stuff that even the strongest RX struggles to keep out. Sometimes it’s a very nasty noise and others you hear nothing. I get it with all my handhelds while walking locally in Scarborough but it’s only a problem within a few hundred metres of the source. In this case Row Brow and Oliver’s Mount.

‘As a result I only use the Baofeng on long hikes where weight is an issue and RF isn’t.’ This is mainly my intention and weight/ 5 Watts is the reason I bought it.
73, John.

Thanks Evan. I think that could work well. Mostly 160 & 80m are the focuses with FM an afterthought. VHF beam not often carried, I’m afraid.
John

Thanks for the adjacent channel figures John. The big difference between these radios and many others is that the guts is a single chip SDR setup. The antenna connects straight to the RF input of the chip and there is no bandpass or front end filtering. The chip covers 134-174MHz and 200-260MHz and 400-520MHz. This means that you effectively have a wideband amp connected to an antenna and as a result it is wide open to any RF received, often tens of MHz away from your own working frequency. The performance gets worse the better the antenna as more out of band RF is fed to the input swamping it.

It’s not the only set overloaded when used with a bigger antenna. I could list handfuls of radios that suffer, some costing hundreds of pounds. Some are very good on the other hand. However, the point is that whilst all suffer to some degree, some are really bad. People saying the performance is acceptable when you only paid a pittance for it are the people ignoring the elephant in the room. If I buy a cheap car, I don’t expect it to be as fast, luxurious, well handling and all round delight compared to a £150000 supercar. But I do expect it to be able to stay on the road, keep up with traffic, not be a danger and to get me around the country when I want. If these uber-cheap radios were cars then you’d find quite a lot of the time when another car was a few hundred yards in front or behind you, that yours would not respond to the steering wheel and veer off the road or the engine would stop till the other car was miles away. “Hey maybe it’s only usable when the roads are deserted but it was cheap” is exactly the mindset people have about a radio that does suffer quite badly from other signals. The problem is the roads are not deserted. And neither are the bands free of out of band signals.

1 Like

See my post 12 days ago re fixing that. Cost depends on your junk box.

4 t of 18 g cu wire on a 5 mm former, 1 - 22 pf trimmer capacitor. 2 coax connectors, one to match rig, one to match antenna. 1 small box - or make one from scrap PCB. One morning building and tuning. It worked for Marconi, it will work for you.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

1 Like

Yes Ron the way to go!

I produce two an number of years ago when I found my Vx 8 just couldn’t hack it on sites that where inhabited with commercial installations. One has less than <1dB insertion loss (two chambers LC thru LC).

The other is almost square in it’s passband shape :wink: but suffers a higher insertion loss due to the tightness of the passband. Physically smaller than the other filter. It’s usually the one I use even with the higher insertion loss. (it was out the Rx front end out of a Storno CQM700 - beautiful little filter - 6 silvered cavities with a helix and screwed stub in each cavity - nothing gets through this baby but 145MHz sigs)

73

Jack(;>J

2 Likes

That’s why I’d be reluctant to condemn the Baofeng - pleasure to be had from understanding the weakness and improving it.
If newcomers can only either build their own, or purchase top performing equipment, there isn’t much scope in between for experimentation. (In my formative years there was lots of cheap surplus military stuff around, as well as old commercial mobile radios to fiddle with)

YMMV, and I can clearly see the elephant - 'course in my day, they were woolly mammoths - :smile:

73
Adrian
G4AZS

2 Likes

Reply to MM0FMF, GM4COX, VK3AFW & G4AZS:
Thanks Andy, Ron, Jack & Adrian,
There’s little more I can add to this except maybe a summary.

  1. The UV-5R-2 was bought with prior knowledge of possible poor performance aspects in mind but was obtained for its light weight versus 5W o/p. Intended use was mainly as a backup in case of HF equipment or propagation failure.

  2. Something caused S2S failure from a GM/SS to GW/NW-001?

  3. My UV-5R-2 and a UV-5R were tested for receive sensitivity and adjacent channel interference (above) and found to be generally satisfactory. This proves they are not deaf but not that they can’t be deafened in certain circumstances.

  4. I accept that failure to S2S may have been due to de-sensing in (possibly out of band) strong RF field but geographically where the source is located in relation to Snowdon, is unclear.

  5. Most of my handhelds suffer from overloading within a few hundred metres of Oliver’s Mount and Row Brow, Scarborough. This happens with supplied duck or a half-wave. More than half a mile away and they all (pricey and otherwise) seem to work OK.

  6. RF filtering? Yes, a good idea if going to summits which are close to commercial sites giving out high levels of RF. A SARS meeting about 15 years ago showed us how to make a tunable cavity for 145MHz from two paint tins etc. The amateur who gave the lecture was the builder of four of our North Yorkshire repeaters so I took full notes. That unit would have been perfect for home use but impractical for SOTA. Jack and Ron’s offerings, are worthy of consideration for SOTA work with handheld rigs intended for front-line use in places known to have strong RF fields.

  7. It was informed to me while using the UV-5R-2 on Snowdon that an M6 was calling me. I have no idea what his working conditions were but for some reason or another, I didn’t hear him, despite calling him in (de-squelched) several times.

  8. There could still be another cause of the S2S failure in this particular case? There were 37 chasers trying to get through albeit not all at once and many were close-in. Alternatively, if my XYL is to be believed, I am deaf (or is it just my ‘filters’).

I am left not knowing and possibly even worse, never likely to know for sure just what was happening on this one specific occasion. The tests have given me some confidence at least. It would be good to know whether any other Snowdon activators have had any problems of this kind. I have activated it on VHF before (once with a Jingtong JT208) but can’t remember anything that might support (or otherwise) the theory’s.

I didn’t understand the elephant picture so I didn’t reply to it. Now I know :wink: I liked the wooly Mammoth comment from Adrian. I too can identify with that.

Thanks to all contributors on here and to Andy for starting the thread. A big thank you to Dave for bench checking the various radios.

I hope that covers most of it with nothing further to add at present, so I’ll get back to seed planting, mending a dripping tap, attending a funeral and getting ready. I am off to GM/NS next week. 1-week; Monday 8th to Monday 15th inclusive (Dave: Won’t be at the club either Monday to pick up the handhelds) so hoping to do at least one mountain if the WX and ionosphere and ticks are kind. It’ll be HF with (sorry) UV-3R as backup.

73, John.

PS: Liked the Arrow beam antenna. Worth another look since Richard stopped making Sotabeams some years ago.

2 Likes

The blocking test is certainly a useful test.

I think there are many times when something works fine on the test bench but fails in the field. I suspect the problem is worsened when there are not just one but many out of band signals and if you are really unlucky, there are two giant digital tv or fm signals with a frequency difference roughly equal to the first IF. No mixer can defeat that problem, the mixing product goes straight to the IF and that problem can only be fixed with a good band pass filter in the antenna circuit. If the frequency difference between the out of band signals is almost equal to the first IF, it doesn’t prevent the radio from hearing loud signals, but the giant signal just down or up by 50 khz is still dominating the relatively wide IF. Stop band suppression of 50 db or less in a simple ceramic filter is nowhere near good enough.

I dimly recall the early Icom mobiles, sold in Australia as IC22A and the synthesised version IC22S. They had helical bandpass filters in the front end and you never knew there were other signals in the spectrum.

Andrew VK1DA VK2UH

1 Like

And OR Bandstop / Notch (trap)

Its a direct sampling radio, the mixer (if fitted) will be part of a SoC.

It is what it is I am afraid. I don’t think a good BPF will resolve all the mixing products which will den sense the HT. It’s somewhat embarrassing when people below cannot understand why you carn’t (and should) hear them.

That’s why I’ve just bought an FT-60E…
My UV5 BaoFeng has just been assigned to the loft.

7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Mulwharcher and mountain bikes and their use