HAM Cheap Little ONe

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retrofive

retrofive

rɛtrəʊ
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Friend/Client showed me this little guy. Light, small, seemed to work well... and cheap!

I have a Ft60, but may pick one of these one for giggles. Yes they chinese whatever crap, but ...

Baofeng UV-5R
 
I have been using the Baofeng 3R for a couple of months and it too is a great little radio. Picked it up for around $50 to my door from a US seller on eBay. These are great inexpensive radios for sure, and better built than I expected. Sound quality easily on par with my $400 HT.

:cheers: and 73

Steve
 
Probably not to bad for trail spotting or as a loaner radio. I wouldn't depend on it as my only radio though. The quality control in Chinese electronics is still hit or miss, give them another ten years and they will be making reliable stuff. You won't be buying it for chump change then though.
 
I forwarded the link to our local mail list and several of us, myself included, purchased some. They're on Amazon as well for roughly the same price.

Personally, I don't see how you can go wrong at that price. It will be a second radio for me and I'll take it to Moab and play with it on the trail. I would have never considered an HT unit, but it's almost free.
 
jonheld said:
I forwarded the link to our local mail list and several of us, myself included, purchased some. They're on Amazon as well for roughly the same price.

Personally, I don't see how you can go wrong at that price. It will be a second radio for me and I'll take it to Moab and play with it on the trail. I would have never considered an HT unit, but it's almost free.
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I've bought two cheap Chinese radios (actually for swl) and both are pieces of $hit.

Don't depend on them.
 
Mine was delivered today. It's so cute and has more functionality than my Kenwood 2M mobile unit.
It may be a POS, but it transmits and receives, which is really what I look for in a radio.
Baofeng.webp
 
jonheld said:
Mine was delivered today. It's so cute and has more functionality than my Kenwood 2M mobile unit.
It may be a POS, but it transmits and receives, which is really what I look for in a radio.
Click to expand...

Right on :). Keep us posted as you use it more. Haven't pulled the trigger yet. I did have to laugh a little when the guy showed me the FM radio.

You going to be at CM'12? Im 99% sure I will be there. We will have a couple ham guys in our group as well.
 
I think I just hit a 2M repeater 14 miles from my house, just standing in my driveway. That's pretty good for a $70 radio with a rubber duck antenna.

Manual programming is REAL clunky and frustrating. The user's manual is incomplete, but there are online PDF guides that work. There is a Yahoo group for the UV-5R as well.

I think it's totally freaking cool. It's the size of a deck of cards but has a good weight to it. It came with every accessory except the programming cable. My cable should be here tomorrow. I downloaded the software and it looks to be mostly usable.
The buttons feel good and I like the Asian girl that talks to me when I press them.
Speaker sounds great and gets annoyingly loud. It will distort at full volume.

I think once it's programmed, assuming I can get it all to play nicely with Win7, it should be bitchin'.
I'm going to try to hit some 70cm repeaters now.
 
retrofive said:
You going to be at CM'12? Im 99% sure I will be there. We will have a couple ham guys in our group as well.
Click to expand...

We have 10 trucks heading from the east coast to Moab. We rented 2 luxury condos on the south side of town and we're there from Sunday to Sunday. The majority of us will be on 2M.

Please look me up if you're out there. I'll be the only white 80 Series with Jersey plates and rust holes.
 
jonheld said:
We have 10 trucks heading from the east coast to Moab. We rented 2 luxury condos on the south side of town and we're there from Sunday to Sunday. The majority of us will be on 2M.

Please look me up if you're out there. I'll be the only white 80 Series with Jersey plates and rust holes.
Click to expand...

:cool: Im tagging along in a older 4runner on 38's, dented, ugly, house paint green :lol:. I wish I could take my 80, but can't this year. We'll have 2m in the truck and a couple HTs dual band.
 
I just bought one as well. It'll be my first ham radio!
 
Jon - may need to find you at CM12 to check this little thing out. Looking forward to your update on the programing software.
 
I believe I made the chareto mistake in college. I got a shot and it cleared up in a few days ;)

There's a ridiculous amount of support out there for this little unit. I joined the Yahoo group (over 600 members) and downloaded 3rd party software (CHIRP) that's pretty well written and well behaved on Win7 64. Comms back and forth to the radio are fast and accurate and basic programming is super easy. Way better than the Baofeng software. There's lots of stuff out there for this thing which makes me believe it really isn't a POS.

There has been some reported problems with extended talk time on high power causing overheating, but I don't have too much to say. It is a $65 radio after all.
 
The CHIRP software is pretty cool. It talks to a variety of radios including my Kenwood TM-271A. Now I have 1 program for both radios. It talks to all the major brands. Very nice software.

CHIRP - Wiki - CHIRP

I'm really liking this little guy. It TX/RX on FRS and GMRS as well.
 
Jon, are you sure it can TX on FRS/GMRS? That would be illegal for a ham radio to be able to do (if I understand the regs correctly). Of course they could possibly be modified to provide the tx capability, but for a piece of ham equipment being sold in the US I would think it would be an FCC issue for it to be able to do that straight out of the box.

cheers,
george.
 
george_tlc said:
Jon, are you sure it can TX on FRS/GMRS? That would be illegal for a ham radio to be able to do (if I understand the regs correctly). Of course they could possibly be modified to provide the tx capability, but for a piece of ham equipment being sold in the US I would think it would be an FCC issue for it to be able to do that straight out of the box.

cheers,
george.
Click to expand...

I understand. I'll just say that for a ham radio it works EXTREMELY well with my FRS/GMRS radios ;)
 
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