Baofeng Baofeng GT-3TP has improvements, but no Narrow trx

[RenoHuskerDu]

I saw goolagtube reviews from hams who seem credible about the GT-3TP. Although its FCC type is UV5R, it has numerous improvements in rx and trx, battery mgmt, onboard mic, the formerly useless paper manual is decent now, and more. I won't go into them here, I'm not an expert, just an informed buyer. It seems that the ham community is still focusing on the UV5R and its considerable shortcomings but has not noticed the new tri-power 1/4/8W GT-3TP model much, at least on the forums I surf. I still have my Yaesu HTs but bought several GT-3TP HTs so I could leave one in every truck and not worry about losing $32. I also gave 2 to elderly neighbors for emegency use. We live in a very rural area, 911 calls can take an hour for response if the Deputy is on the other side of our county. I can be at their house in 4 minutes.

For CHIRP programming, you have to use "BF-F8HP" model. On clone, you get a popup error about firmware version mismatch for "other" fields, but it's not significant, or maybe Narrow band is in there....

There are some oddities. For the low ChiComm price, we put up with some crapola. The most vexing oddity is so far I can't get the unit to stay in Narrow mode. I've tried with CHIRP, and tried manually on the HT. The little homey don't play Narrow, apparently. Anybody overcome that yet?

FYI

 

[ko6jw_2]

Baofengs are not type accepted for any service that requires narrow banding. Ham radio (generally) does not use narrow band although many ham HT's can do narrow band (sort of). Thus, they fill a legal need only for ham use. B-Tech makes one radio that is type accepted for GMRS. That's what your neighbors should be using. Preprogrammed too.

 

[rescuecomm]

You may have to erase the memory channel and re-enter the info with narrow band set.

 

[RenoHuskerDu]

These folks have poor cell service, plus a metal roof. The cell tower is 8 miles away. If they call us on the HT, it's part 97 paragraph 403 time.
While narrowband may not be required, it's thought of as good radio etiquette in Texas.

 

[RenoHuskerDu]

You may have to erase the memory channel and re-enter the info with narrow band set.

In CHIRP, it appears that Upload to Radio overwrites existing channel info. With this HT, wide or narrow is not set per channel. Curiously, it's in the Work Mode Settings, and is set per channel bank. I set A bank to Narrow, but the HT ignores that.