baofeng questions

[SpugEddy]

Not that anyone would actually get in trouble for it, but there is also a thing called aiding and abetting.

I'm not sure what that means

 

[paulears]

On all radio forums - I personally think that the legal status of using radios should always be mentioned to new users, who understandably may have just ordered a radio from Aliexpress and used it on whatever was in it, and knows nothing about the legality for where they live. Once they know - assuming that the radio is not set to something silly like 121.5, 243, 156.8 then for many people, even in my tiny country, they really are not going to involve flashing lights and handcuffs, but like the speeding and other examples, are illegal. Once understood, we then move on to technical stuff, legal job done.

It's pretty clear from my own experiments that my Amateur spec Icom IC-32 dual band performed amazingly well in the narrow ham bands. My expansion of it to cover wide on VHF and UHF simply showed how the filtering really was tight on the ham bands where the design was aimed. My commercial UHF Icoms of that era were even tighter, on the brand new 12.5KHz spacing. If a signal was even slightly too wide, being from a 25KHz channel system, it would simply mute the audio. These radios still work and perform far better than the brand new Baofengs I have on the shelf for disposable jobs. The Icoms are more sensitive, reject adjacent channel signals and suffer far less from intermod products. However - in 1985 or so, these things cost more than a weeks pay. Translate that to today and Baofeng price, and what do we expect? Seemingly amazing performance, and it just cannot happen.

For critical radio systems I buy expensive Japanese brands through choice, but for people crashing through woodland with paint ball guns, using expensive radios is pointless and to be frank - stupid.

What was the old phrase? Horses for courses? Right product for the appropriate scenario.

We should stop slamming Baofeng - because they are the current introduction to the hobby, and amazingly good value. Of course they are cheap, cheerful and technically compromised, but you can buy one for the price of a MacDonalds meal! What do we expect?