Baofeng UV5

Equipment
41

In view of this discussion, it is interesting that KC8VWM posted two spectrum analyser traces for the UV-5R on the Zed: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/new-model-of-china-25w-dual-band.562295/page-2

Instead of the rumoured thicket of spurs, on two metres there were just two, one at 296 MHz was 52.39 dB down and a similar sized one at 580 MHz. On 70 cm there was just one spur at 873 MHz which was at -57.27 dB. If there were any other spurs they were buried in the noise on the trace. OK, so that is just one sample, and the nay-sayers may regard the Zed as not being a reliable source, but if you take it at face value then it isn’t too bad a performance for a handy that costs just £29.95!

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Brian some goon posting an unsubstantiated picture is not the same league as a national society with a reputation for honest testing or a national licencing authority saying they’re junk.

But you can go on believing the world is flat if you want. This confirmation bias presented by people who have been unfortunate enough to buy one is typical. It’s exactly the same lack of critical thinking that lead people to question the dangers of smoking cigarettes in the 60’s and 70’s. More and more evidence was presented showing smoking lead to lung cancer and heart disease but there’d always be some wiseacre who tell you his aunt smoked 40 a day and lived till she was 94 ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who died of lung cancer worldwide.

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43

Hi Andrews and all,

I can recommend a small box to fit on the HT between it and it’s aerial. It is a Marconi Interference Reducer. By 1901 everyone had to have one. It is obviously missing from some modern apparatus. A coil and capacitor form the main elements. The receiver/transmitter are connected to a tap near the bottom of the coil and the antenna and earth connect to a small coil that couples to the main one. Adjusting the capacitor and the coupling coil reduces interference from stations on other wavelengths, increases the desired signals and enhances the delivery of power to the aerial system. Component ratings need to be appropriate for the Tx power.

Cheers,
Ron
VK3AFW

44

You know, Andy, I would have bet the price of a pint on you saying something like that!:wink:

We’ll pass over the red herring about smoking, as a clincher for your case it has more holes in it than my XYL’s flour sifter!:grinning: The fact is that I do not have a UV5, so your confirmation bias argument falls flat on its face, too! As for me believing the world is flat, well, your flow of rudeness is in fine fettle this morning, but I will only remind you that dear old Pat, Sir Patrick Moore to you, was a founder member of the Flat Earth Society and attended all their meetings until somebody recognised him behind his false beard!

So, what is “critical thinking”? Critical thinking is the objective analysis of facts to form a judgment, is it not? Now you are correct in citing the results found by the ARRL and the licencing authority, those are facts, but it is also a fact that there are numerous claims that the UV5 has greatly improved since those early samples were tested, and those spectrum analyser traces posted by that ham that you so rudely categorise as a “goon” are also facts, you may reject them because they do not confirm your bias, but they are still facts. So, a critical thinker is faced with conflicting facts, what should he do? Why, simples - suspend judgement while awaiting more facts.

Isn’t critical thinking a wonderful thing?:grinning:

45

It requires critical reading, something you failed on by assuming confirmation bias applied to you.

46

It must be raining outside

Any of the flat earth society fancy joining me on a hill tomorrow? :wink:

47

I’m on my way to some very flat earth right now - Blackpool! Definitely wx for working indoors rather than activating SOTA - thankfully it’s the former today!

1 Like
48

I bought A UV5R when I was off work with a broken collar bone recently, the menu’s are a little bit fussy and the supplied rubber duck is perhaps not ideal for DX, received signals improved when I swapped to a straight telescopic 1/4λ antenna, further improvements can be observed if you use an external speaker mic.

I generally only ever used it for listening however so I can’t report on how well it transmits, I last used it to listen to BBC radio 4
 :rolling_eyes:

[Edited to fix format]

49

Totall agree Andrew, and it is not just RF dense sites that these radios experience problems. On one of VK1FWBD’s recent activation from Mt Taylor I was hearing his 5W? signal on 2m from his UV5 at between a 57 and 59 at my QTH. He was not able to hear me well enough to work me until he moved (presumably a little further away from an RF source). At the time I was using around 80-100W.

This is not an isolated experience - I and others have observed this issue multiple times. I think that people do not seem to realise that their radio being badly desensitised is not always reflected in audible interference or even a visual indication on the guess meter. Now when they are struggling to hear someone running 20 times the power they are, then that becomes obvious - at least to me.

For me, I am not against chinese radios (I have and use a number of the commercial spec Anytone DMR radios which work quite well in high RF environments), but I find that the cheapies are almost always poor performers. In almost all instances, buy cheap, get junk!

Matt
VK1MA

1 Like
50

It was just this experience on that site that let me to pick up a new FT-60 (what happens when I am left unsupervised with the credit card).

In the case that Matt is talking about (and not the only one - remember Mt Stromlo? @VK1MA ) I moved a mere 6-10M and I was able to pick up the calling station a full 59. I not using the standard rubber ducky.

There other advantages (and not just the insides) the workhorse FT-60, but I will save them for another day.

Wade

VK1FWBD.com

51

Relatively speaking, it’s as good as free. Its also great to pocket when going places you wouldnt normally take a radio and mine hardly even needs charging. The torch is effective too :slight_smile:

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52

:thumbsup:

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53

Hi Wade, was very happy to hear you had upgraded to the FT-60 - it will definitely improve your ability to hear people when on summits with high RF levels. The cheapies like the UV5R have their place (in the bin if you ask Andy :slight_smile: ) as they are cheap and not too much of a heartbreak if you lose one, but nigh on useless anywhere near strong RF.

Catch you on another hill no doubt!

Matt
VK1MA

1 Like
54

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:

NW1 Snowdon on 11-04-17 (77).JPG2272×1704 794 KB

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

10 Likes
55

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

56

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

57

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

58

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.

59

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

60

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.