Baofeng Baofeng uv-5r hand held radio

[nd5y]

When I swap both rubber duck antennas that come on UV-5R and F8HP I don't notice a difference between these two antennas as it was mentioned that the rubber duck antenna on the F8HP is new and improved over the rubber duck antenna on the UV-5R antenna.

The antenna that comes with the radio can vary depending on who you bought it from.
Different importers/dealers sometimes supply different antennas for the same model.

 

[nd5y]

Also on Menu when programming manually how do you know what to choose on the following items:
2.5 KHz to 50 KHz??
- or + ??
Narrow band or Wide band?

MENU 1 STEP is the synthesizer tuning increments in VFO (Frequency) mode. The frequency you are trying to enter must be divisible by the tuning step.

MENU 25 SFT-D and MENU 26 OFFSET control the offset and shift direction in VFO mode. That is how you make the radio transmit on a different frequency than the receive frequency for repeater use in VFO mode. You need to program the transmit and receive frequencies separately in memory channels.

MENU 5 WN Wide is 5 kHz deviation/16 kHz bandwidth. Narrow is 2.5 kHz deviation/11 kHz bandwidth.
Ham radio almost always uses wide.
Almost all commercial/public safety/federal goverment analog users are narrow.
FRS is restricted to narrow.
GMRS can use wide or narrow.
MURS can use wide or narrow on154.57 and 154.6 but is restricted to narrow on the 151 MHz channels.

 

[nd5y]

The bottom of this page has a Baofeng menu to CHIRP settings cross reference.

 

[stingray327]

• To enter 451.0025 the step must be set to 2.5K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [3] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [2] [UP ARROW].
• To enter 451.00625 the step must be set to 6.25K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [7] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [6] [UP ARROW].
• To enter 451.0125 the step can be set to either 2.5K, 6.25K or 12.5K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [1] [3] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [1] [2] [UP ARROW].

This range is from 2.5K to 50K on the radio. The radio makes it so you must chose one setting. My guess would be to choose the smaller K's in number to receive more signals?

MENU 1 STEP is the synthesizer tuning increments in VFO (Frequency) mode. The frequency you are trying to enter must be divisible by the tuning step.

MENU 25 SFT-D and MENU 26 OFFSET control the offset and shift direction in VFO mode. That is how you make the radio transmit on a different frequency than the receive frequency for repeater use in VFO mode. You need to program the transmit and receive frequencies separately in memory channels.

MENU 5 WN Wide is 5 kHz deviation/16 kHz bandwidth. Narrow is 2.5 kHz deviation/11 kHz bandwidth.
Ham radio almost always uses wide.
Almost all commercial/public safety/federal goverment analog users are narrow.
FRS is restricted to narrow.
GMRS can use wide or narrow.
MURS can use wide or narrow on154.57 and 154.6 but is restricted to narrow on the 151 MHz channels.

So this means I maybe going back and forth switching between 2.5K to 12.5K depending on what I monitor? Same goes for picking the narrow band and wide band freqs on the Ham radio or government freqs? If I set radio to narrow band it looks like I may have more choices in monitoring most agencies with the exception of the HAM radio which is wide band?
I'm not sure what the - or + means but you must select one or the other.

Kind of confusing. I wish there was one setting like on a scanner where you can monitor all freqs. or if the radio would automatically do the above without having to do the selections on your own.

 

[stingray327]

The antenna that comes with the radio can vary depending on who you bought it from.
Different importers/dealers sometimes supply different antennas for the same model.

Looks like the Nagota 771 is superior to both the antennas that come with UV-5R and F8HP radios.

 

[nd5y]

• To enter 451.0025 the step must be set to 2.5K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [3] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [2] [UP ARROW].
• To enter 451.00625 the step must be set to 6.25K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [7] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [6] [UP ARROW].
• To enter 451.0125 the step can be set to either 2.5K, 6.25K or 12.5K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [1] [3] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [1] [2] [UP ARROW].

This range is from 2.5K to 50K on the radio. The radio makes it so you must chose one setting. My guess would be to choose the smaller K's in number to receive more signals?

So this means I maybe going back and forth switching between 2.5K to 12.5K depending on what I monitor? Same goes for picking the narrow band and wide band freqs on the Ham radio or government freqs? If I set radio to narrow band it looks like I may have more choices in monitoring most agencies with the exception of the HAM radio which is wide band?
I'm not sure what the - or + means but you must select one or the other.

Kind of confusing. I wish there was one setting like on a scanner where you can monitor all freqs. or if the radio would automatically do the above without having to do the selections on your own.

What exactly are you using this radio for? It's not a scanner. It doesn't do anything automatically. If you have zero knowledge about 2-way radio systems then you won't be able to program it. If you are using CHIRP to program it and only using it for a scanner then you don't need to mess with offsets and steps and input frequencies.

If you program a memory channel in a BF-F8HP or other Baofeng models then you can't change most of the menu settings anyway because they will not be saved unless you delete and reenter the memory channel.

The step menu has no effect on receiving a signal. It only controls the VFO tuning steps when using the up/down arrows or doing a band scan or entering a frequency directly. If you are using CHIRP or other programming software you don't have to mess with it and it isn't stored in a memory channel.

+ and - shift direction means the transmit frequency is higher (+) or lower (-) than the receive frequency. You don't need it for receiving.

For receiving on a Baofeng it doesn't make any difference if you have the bandwidth set to wide or narrow becasue those radios don't have IF filters. Narrow just increases the receive audio level slightly.

 

[stingray327]

I am going to try to load and program radio with CHIRP program again. Up to now I have been doing everything manually because I keep getting error messages. Thanks for those direct answers to my questions. In that fashion I understand this stuff better.

 

[jonwienke]

• To enter 451.0025 the step must be set to 2.5K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [3] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [2] [UP ARROW].
• To enter 451.00625 the step must be set to 6.25K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [7] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [0] [6] [UP ARROW].
• To enter 451.0125 the step can be set to either 2.5K, 6.25K or 12.5K and you must press [4] [5] [1] [0] [1] [3] or [4] [5] [1] [0] [1] [2] [UP ARROW].

This range is from 2.5K to 50K on the radio. The radio makes it so you must chose one setting. My guess would be to choose the smaller K's in number to receive more signals?

So this means I maybe going back and forth switching between 2.5K to 12.5K depending on what I monitor? Same goes for picking the narrow band and wide band freqs on the Ham radio or government freqs? If I set radio to narrow band it looks like I may have more choices in monitoring most agencies with the exception of the HAM radio which is wide band?
I'm not sure what the - or + means but you must select one or the other.

Kind of confusing. I wish there was one setting like on a scanner where you can monitor all freqs. or if the radio would automatically do the above without having to do the selections on your own.

No. If you specify 12.5K steps, you can only enter frequencies evenly divisible by 12.5KHz. If you specify 2.5K, you can enter any frequency evenly divisible by 2.5KHz. But that has no effect on channel width; that's either 25 or 12.5Khz, regardless of the step setting.

 

[stingray327]

No. If you specify 12.5K steps, you can only enter frequencies evenly divisible by 12.5KHz. If you specify 2.5K, you can enter any frequency evenly divisible by 2.5KHz. But that has no effect on channel width; that's either 25 or 12.5Khz, regardless of the step setting.

What setting would you use?

 

[jonwienke]

I use the 2.5K step so I can enter whatever frequency is needed, and 25K or 12.5K channel width based on what's appropriate for the channel.

 

[stingray327]

I use the 2.5K step so I can enter whatever frequency is needed, and 25K or 12.5K channel width based on what's appropriate for the channel.

ok t hanks.