New UV-5R V2+

[lwaite9]

Hello all!

I recently purchased a Baofeng UV-5R V2+ on Amazon, and was excited to have purchased it during a sale. With a "discrete" style earpiece, and programming cable, the total came to around $43!

I'm definitely looking into soon acquiring the technician's licence, since I'd like to be able to use the device at work, and we have certain frequencies delegated to us on on the work walkies via corporate, but I'm assuming I'd need the tech license for my own device, since it's output power is different than the Motorola ones, as well as the Baofeng being able to use other frequencies. I was also hoping to use it as an EMS scanner on the side.

Unfortunately, after programming and doing some field scanning in my area, as well as some research here and in a few other radio frequency charts online, the police/emergency channels are all DMR, which the UV series can't receive properly, since it's FM only.

So, I have a few questions. I'll try and sort them by priority.

1) My workplace has the Motorola commercial radios, set to certain frequencies for channels 1-6. Can I use my device to inter-operate on low power with those channels only with no licence, or am I correct in believing the output of the Baofeng does in fact require the FCC Licence?

2) I've been reading that certain stores, particularly Wal-Mart, for whatever reason, have chosen to use MURS frequencies. I can confirm that in my area, the Wal-Mart down the road, does in fact use the blue dot MURS frequency, 154.570 MHz. Similarly to question 1, am I legally able to operate the UV-5r on the other MURS frequencies (to a friend with a MURS only, max 2W device), or, since the UV has a "High" Tx setting (high is 4W, low 1W) does that fall under "external control to increase power above 2 watts," thus requiring the Technician's licence anyhow? I'm aware that the UV is not Part 95, it's only Part 90 certified.

and 3) Finally, is there any way at all to use the UV-5R V2+ to decode DMR? I don't believe there would be a way to do so on the device directly (even through CHIRP), since it simply doesn't have the hardware. That being said, can I possibly use a laptop and the serial cable, or an audio conversion kit, with something like SDR# and DSD+ to decode? Would it be more cost effective to simply capture the DMR at home with an SDR setup (been considering RTL-SDR honestly), and then streaming that to my phone via a custom setup? (Been coding for 6+ years, so I'd be able to make a low latency service to stream from SDR# or Unitrunker to my Android phone.)

Thank you all in advance! Happy Thanksgiving/Christmas~

 

[GV27]

I don't know for sure on the commercial side but do on the MURS side - but I think you run into the same problem on both: the FCC has specific requirements and certifications that the Baofeng doesn't meet for anything but Ham (and many question that even). For example, on MURS the FCC requires certified (I think) radios with the MURS frequencies preprogrammed. For FRS and GMRS, again the requirement is a certified radio with an antenna that can't be removed/replaced. There are other requirements and I'm no expert on either, but those are some examples.

So the short answer to 1 and 2 is no. Could you program the radio to use those frequencies properly? Sure. Could you get away with it? Certainly. Do so legally? No.

For #3 I don't know thing 1 about DMR but you can get an audio cable for the UV-5 to connect to analog audio in on your computer and do whatever you want. The radio itself doesn't know anything about DMR. though. I use a UV-5 and audio cable for APRS. This cable - they market it for APRS but it's just an audio cable:

https://www.amazon.com/BTECH-APRS-K2-Interface-APRSDroid-Compatible/dp/B01LMIBAZW

As a ham radio the UV-5R is a lot of bang for the buck. I love mine. I've dropped it several times (I have a long antenna that makes it unstable) and 2m has gone to crap on me and I need to spend the $35 again, but I've certainly gotten a lot more than that worth of enjoyment out of it. Still works a treat on 70cm.

If you do go ham, make sure you get your license if you're going to transmit. Besides being illegal, nobody is going to talk back to you except perhaps to tell you off if you're unlicensed.

If you're not going to transmit though you can certainly listen in to a wide variety of frequencies including everything referenced in this thread.

 

[GV27]

Oh and just to clarify - a Ham technician license (any ham license in fact) only applies to ham and not MURS or GMRS or anything else so having a ham license or not really has no bearing on any of your questions.

 

[SteveSimpkin]

Here are my comments to your questions. If anyone sees a mistake in my comments, please let me know.

1. Does your radio have a label on it which indicates it is Certified for FCC Part 90 operation?
Many UV-5R models are certified for Part 90 operation, but I am not sure all variations are. If it is Part 90 compliant than you should be able to use it on your workplace frequencies provided you have the permission of the owners of those frequencies to use this radio on their system. Assuming they give you permission, you do not require a license to use the radio on their frequencies (only). Their license would cover you for those specific frequencies.

2. The UV-5R radios are not certified for any FCC Part 95 operation so they are technically not legal to use on MURS, FRS or GMRS frequencies. An amateur radio or GMRS licensee will not help with this.

3. While you could connect the audio output of this radio to the sound card of your computer, the audio output bandwidth will be too narrow to decode DMR. It would probably be easier to buy a $20 RTL-SDR USB dongle and use decoding software.
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-radio-scanner-tutorial-decoding-digital-voice-p25-with-dsd/

 

[nd5y]

3. While you could connect the audio output of this radio to the sound card of your computer, the audio output bandwidth may be too narrow to decode DMR.

You can't decode DMR, P25, NXDN or any other 4 level direct FSK signal using speaker audio. It has to be unfiltered baseband discriminator audio or I/Q output from a SDR.

 

[lwaite9]

Thank you all so much for your replies! I certainly appreciate the clarification.

I did end up purchasing an SDR, from RTL-SDR.com. I have been able to locate a DMR signal, but DSD+ isn't able to decode it, returning an error that the sequence is unknown type. Usually the output is something like:

+DMR CACH ERR slot2 BS DATA ERR3 CC=1 Idle
Sync:+DMR
+DMR CACH ERR slot1 BS DATA ERR3 CC=9 Unknown TypeF
+DMR slot1 BS DATA ERR3 CC=0 Unknown TypeB
Sync:+DMR

Hopefully someone with DMR tracking experience can explain. I did read somewhere to keep an eye on the bandwidth, as DSD+ can sometimes have some issues with decoding if the filter is too narrow, but that was still giving the same errors. Furthermore, the errors/attempts at decoding seemed to show more frequently (picked up by DSD+ better?) in DSM recieve mode, rather than the suggestion for NFM, upon following the official guide at RTL-SDR.com - Decoding Digital Voice



As far as my workplace, it's a fairly large corporation, with grandfathered licenses for the provided radios, which unlike Walmart, are not MURS frequencies, and require preprogrammed Part 90/95 certified radios. That being said, I found out that my UV-5R V2+ (which I'll refer to as my UV from here on,) cannot be used legally, with or without permission, since the antenna, programming, and output power can be readily modified by me.)

(I also was unable to obtain permission from said corporation, since they like for everything to be on "their" equipment, which I'm perfectly happy with. No risk of my equipment breaking is peace of mind for me, but I do miss my long battery life and dual receive on the UV. The provided radios die in about two hours, whereas my UV got me around 4 days standby, 2 days on frequent transmit/receive.

Last thing being the interoperability with MURS, I'm curious if there's any loophole or legal process to use the device on those frequencies, short of just purchasing a Part 95, MURS specific device. I did find this little clause:

If the Radio was Part 90 certified prior to November 12, 2002 and transmits no more
than 2 watts and has no external control to increase power above 2 watts and does not narrowband
on the 151 MHz and 154 MHz frequencies or narrowband on 151 MHz and wideband on
154 MHz frequencies (all parts must be true)

I'm assuming, based on your previous replies, that there is no way around it, since these requirements are of the device itself and not the operating mode. Even if the UV is programmed for MURS and set to 1w output, the restriction is upon the actual limitations of the device, right? So, if it came to a court situation, and there was reasonable proof that the device was manually locked (read: programmed) to those specs, what would the general expected outcome of such a legal issue be? I don't think I'm willing to risk it, anyhow, seeing as I'd like to actually be ham certified, but I am curious.

Thank you again for all your excellent information so far, it's been a really exciting journey into the world of radio for me!