HAM Cheap Little ONe

[skidplate]

Don't know if it's been mentioned but you can program in all the family frequencies that all the walkie talkies use, or create your own. It also is a scanner. I have my local police and fire dept. programmed in, so they're fun even if you don't have a ham liscense.

 

[Cruiserdrew]

I just got one of these for $44 from Amazon. It's firmware version #297. There is a lot of confusion about which version of this radio you get when you order. UV-5RA and UV-5R+ appear to be the same radio, with the same firmware, in a slightly different case. As of just now, they are the current versions. I got the UV-5RA from Etekcity for what it's worth.

So far, this seems to be a really good radio for a really small price. You are getting the features of a $200 HT for $40.

You have to program it with CHIRP. I've been a ham for almost 8 years and could not figure out the keyboard programming. The manual that comes with it is basically worthless. CHIRP however is the bomb for this radio, as is the Miklor site.

The antenna it comes with is OK, I have a couple of ebay specials on the way to see if it makes a difference.

The battery life is good and high cap batteries are available for $20 or so. Batteries for the UV-5RA just became available and I have one coming from Hong Kong. We'll see how that works out. Unfortunately you need to think about what radio you have to get the proper spare battery as the minor case differences can prevent some from fitting the version you might have.

Overall, it's a decent radio, that allows a whole lot of illegal activity. For instance, if you program the NOAA weather channels, which are extremely useful while out in the wild, you can't turn off the transmit function. So if you were careless, and hit the PTT, it would transmit on the weather frequencies. This is not to mention the FRS/GMRS/MURS transmission possibilities.

There are a couple of issues:
1-The antenna is a SMA female which is a "standard" only in Chinese radios. It's easy to work around, but you do need to think about it.

2-It isn't weather proof like most name brand HTs.

3-Forget about keyboard programming, so you need to buy a $10 programming cable. Not a big deal, but it adds 25% to the price of the radio. There are some cable driver issues you need to work through too.

4-Charger works but is junk. Unfortunately it no longer has the Chinglish label. I wanted to make the Chareto mistake and sadly, it is no longer a feature of this radio.


If you buy one of these, take the time to work through CHIRP. It makes programming this radio fun and increases it's usefulness dramatically. The latest firmware I have seen is the 297. If you buy from Etekcity or Sain Store on Amazon, you get the latest version. Interestingly, if you get the programming cable ($9) on Amazon, there are no driver issues that I could detect. The driver that windows loads automatically, works fine.

Just for reference, I was working the Mt Diablo repeater today from my driveway, which is 90 miles or so. Not bad for a $40 HT with the stock antenna.

 

[Pin_Head]

For instance, if you program the NOAA weather channels, which are extremely useful while out in the wild, you can't turn off the transmit function. So if you were careless, and hit the PTT, it would transmit on the weather frequencies.

You can program it to turn off TX on receive only channels by setting duplex to "off". This can be over ridden by the keyboard or VFO mode.

 

[Cruiserdrew]

You can program it to turn off TX on receive only channels by setting duplex to "off". This can be over ridden by the keyboard or VFO mode.

That's a good tip. I'l lreset later today!

Thanks

 

[Fast Eddy]

Must take test...must take test...

 

[spressomon]

Hmmm...just caught up to this thread. These would be way better than the Motocrapola FRS/GMRS radios we use when hunting...especially with the battery life you guys are getting. Going to jump on this. Thanks guys!

 

[Cruiserdrew]

Hmmm...just caught up to this thread. These would be way better than the Motocrapola FRS/GMRS radios we use when hunting...especially with the battery life you guys are getting. Going to jump on this. Thanks guys!

Not that it's legal. but....this radio will broadcast and receive FRS/GMRS just fine. If you look on CHIRP, there is already a preloaded file with these frequencies, not that you would want to do that. So in an emergency, you could still talk to your buds who were too cheap to buy a real radio.

 

[e9999]

my understanding is that in case of a real emergency you can use any band you want.


do you guys literally mean that one can't effectively program these things from the keypad or is that a figure of speech? If the former, that's not good. If cumbersome or even difficult, I can live with that.

 

[Cruiserdrew]

my understanding is that in case of a real emergency you can use any band you want.


do you guys literally mean that one can't effectively program these things from the keypad or is that a figure of speech? If the former, that's not good. If cumbersome or even difficult, I can live with that.

It is possible. It just is silly and fiddley. You would never remember how to in an emergency and the manual it comes with doesn't really tell you. There are directions on the Miklor site you can follow and some youTube videos as well.

I programmed mine with everything I could think of. That way the radio can serve as a back up image for CHIRP.

We could start a whole thread on CHIRP which I am still learning, but one of the key features is that CHIRP can be used to clone radios across brand and platforms. So in a small group trip, all the handhelds and mobiles (assuming they are supported by CHIRP which most are) could be programmed the same with the same numerical channel assignments and labels. That would be extremely helpful in certain circumstances.

Also since CHIRP saves mirrored files, you could reset everyone's radio at the end of the trip to what ever it was before. This would be killer for say group trips to Moab or expeditions of any type.

Bottom line Eric-why do you want to program from the keyboard? Just for fun? To save $10? Not worth the effort in my opinion. CHIRP is free and it's fun to mess with in it's own right.

 

[Pin_Head]

I think that it is legal on FRS channels 8-14, where 5 watts of power are allowed. It may not do the subchannels well; I have never tried it. Channels 1-7 are limited to 0.5 watts. I don't see the problem with the GMRS channel if you have a license. I don't know how anyone would know you have a GRMS license as nobody uses a call sign or identifier.

 

[jonheld]

one of the key features is that CHIRP can be used to clone radios across brand and platforms.

Yup. When we were out in Moab, I added all the trail specific frequencies to CHIRP, along with everything else, and flashed it to at least 6 radios. Many Yaesu units don't talk with CHIRP yet, but almost every other manufacturer does.

 

[Fast Eddy]

I think that it is legal on FRS channels 8-14, where 5 watts of power are allowed. It may not do the subchannels well; I have never tried it. Channels 1-7 are limited to 0.5 watts. I don't see the problem with the GMRS channel if you have a license. I don't know how anyone would know you have a GRMS license as nobody uses a call sign or identifier.

HAM radios are rarely certified for FCC Part 90/95a operation. There have been some in the past, but as I understand it, none of the current models are so certified.

Will it work? Sure. FCC going to knock on your tent at night? Probably not.

 

[e9999]

It is possible. It just is silly and fiddley. You would never remember how to in an emergency and the manual it comes with doesn't really tell you. There are directions on the Miklor site you can follow and some youTube videos as well.

I programmed mine with everything I could think of. That way the radio can serve as a back up image for CHIRP.

We could start a whole thread on CHIRP which I am still learning, but one of the key features is that CHIRP can be used to clone radios across brand and platforms. So in a small group trip, all the handhelds and mobiles (assuming they are supported by CHIRP which most are) could be programmed the same with the same numerical channel assignments and labels. That would be extremely helpful in certain circumstances.

Also since CHIRP saves mirrored files, you could reset everyone's radio at the end of the trip to what ever it was before. This would be killer for say group trips to Moab or expeditions of any type.

Bottom line Eric-why do you want to program from the keyboard? Just for fun? To save $10? Not worth the effort in my opinion. CHIRP is free and it's fun to mess with in it's own right.

I have indeed looked at CHIRP -although not used it yet- and did note the download feature. But no, my thought is more that you'd be out there and need to dial in some frequency that you have not programmed it for yet and then can't do it very well without a laptop with you. I can't even remember how to do that with my Yaesu and that's probably easier. And I'm not getting any younger either...

 

[Kofoed]

Hummm. $40 to get an "FRS" radio would eliminate the need to mod my ft50 and ft60. FRS is restricted to 0.5 watts. Gmrs I think is 5watts mobile. The gmrs license is easy as filling out a form and paying a fee

 

[Cruiserdrew]

I tested out the cross pollination between Yaesu and the Beofeng via CHIRP.

The short version is, it works fine.

I had some initial problems with the serial-usb driver with the Yaesu cable (which was my fault, not the cable) but once that was dealt with, it works very well.

It's easy to just copy/paste one .chirp file to another and then upload to the other radio. It would be more elegant to export/import the .csv file but I was in a hurry and it wasn't necessary.

One other tid-bit for you CHIRP users. The new stable version was released today and it supports the UV-5R-so you no longer have to run the "daily build". Pretty cool.

I got my Yaesu programming cable from KawaMall and it seems to have a genuine Prolific chip set and so runs the updated driver. If you get a clone, the clone was of an older chipset and the new driver kills it, meaning you have to manually install and older version of the Prolific driver-it's a serious pain but maybe not so bad if you are a computer nerd which I am not. I'm not certain about this, but it's running well on my 64 bit Win7 machine after about an hour of panic.

 

[e9999]

Andy, where'd you get the BF cable if you're still happy with it?

 

[Cruiserdrew]

Andy, where'd you get the BF cable if you're still happy with it?

Got the one from Amazon for $9 or so. Runs without issue.

The Yaesu cable would have run fine too. I did not understand how to download the radio, so when it didn't work, I thought it was a driver issue. So I tried to install a different driver manually, botched that, and finally let it down load the driver it needed, and re-read the cloning procedure for Yaesu, and once I understood that, and got the sequence right, it worked fine. Like I said, I'm not a natural computer person.

Just for others-the Yaesu procedure is way different than the Baofeng procedure. You need to first put the Yaesu into clone mode, then tell the radio it's OK to upload, then tell the computer it's ok to download into the computer.

I think all other radios do this automatically with chirp. With Yaesu you need to get the radio into clone mode, then tell it to clone and it treats the computer as another radio. Then it works fine.

As you can tell, I am highly impressed with CHIRP and the effort that went into it. I'm going to send those guys some $$ to keep the effort alive.

I really wish I intuitively understood USB/Serial/COM ports etc. That would have made this MUCH easier. I learned more about computers this afternoon than radios, but the serial/com/usb port thing is really stupid. "Dammit, Jim, I'm a Doctor not a computer scientist..."

 

[jonheld]

The new stable version was released today and it supports the UV-5R-so you no longer have to run the "daily build". Pretty cool.

I haven't played with CHIRP since last April. At that time the software didn't support many of the Yaesu units which was a complaint I had. It worked great on the Baofeng and Kenwood units. I had to use the Yaesu software which didn't let me import any sort of file. Spent a lot of time manually entering data and the radio was a PITA to flash, but it worked.

I'm going to grab the latest version and mess around a bit. Thanks for the 411.

 

[timmbuck2]

For more info on these radios, check out Nakman's thread on the Rising Sun Forum:

http://risingsun4x4club.org/forum2/showthread.php?t=19099

Tons of good info from a very knowledgeable HAM guy, and good info on CHIRP also.

I bought 2 of the 5R's on Amazon with the cable for under $100! The 3R is now around $30 or so? I have a Yeasu 7900 in my rig, and a couple of Yeasu HT floating around, but these radios are great to toss in the backpack for camping, hiking, put in your shirt pocket for spotting on trails, monitoring the kids on their FRS walkie talkies, etc etc...and a *great* way to get new people into using HAMs on the trail.

 

[cody c]

I got one of the little UV-5R radios just after this thread was started.

Its been a while and it hasnt seen a ton of use but, has been a great buy. The last time I used it was December 1st, turned it on while on a winter wheeling day, it was on for probably 10 hours, hasnt been charged since the trip but last time I checked it (bouncing around in my center console) it still had lots of battery life. I may buy a second one just as a loaner.

The only thing I have done is get a corded CB style microphone for it. Its easier to have it at the dash and operate it without bumping buttons, and the passenger can hear and operate it easier as well. I got one like this: http://dx.com/p/3-5mm-2-5mm-clip-on...ble-14769?rt=1&p=6&m=1&r=4&k=1&t=1&s=&u=14769 for $6.