Tips on How to Best Configure and Use Your Baofeng UV-5R
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If you’re reading this, you’ve probably either just purchased a UV-5R or are about to do so. Congratulations on a good choice.
Like any other professional grade two-way radio, the UV-5R has an enormous amount of flexibility and versatility in terms of how you can program and use it. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. You can’t just take the radio out of its box, charge up the battery, and start using it. Although it comes with 21 simplex channels pre-loaded, you’re not likely to use any of them, and so you’ll need to program in and name the channels you want.
Furthermore, you’ll quickly discover that the provided manual is far from well written.
But, never fear. Solutions to all these issues are readily available. Let’s go through them more or less in some sort of sensible sequence.
1. Radio Firmware
Do you have a recent level of firmware in your radio? There are some relevant improvements and bug fixes in newer firmware levels, and it is easy to check.
Turn your radio off. Press and hold the ‘3’ key, and while holding it, turn your radio on. Release the ‘3’ key.
Your display will show the firmware level in the radio. It will say something like
VER
BFB297
You want your radio to be version 297 or higher. This software has been out since about Nov/Dec 2012, and if your radio has a lower version firmware, that means you’re getting old stock. More to the point, earlier version firmwares have some bugs in them, and – most to the point – the firmware in your radio can not be updated.
We’d recommend that if you get a radio with an earlier firmware, you contact your seller and ask for an exchange for a more recent version radio, or simply return it if they can’t/won’t/don’t offer an exchange.
This is one of the benefits of dealing with Amazon (the link takes you straight to their UV-5R page) – not only do they have great prices, and fast free shipping if you’re a Prime member, they also have great return policies.
At the time of writing (April 2013), we are still occasionally hearing of people getting stuck with old stock radios. Don’t let it be you.
2. A Decent Manual
Okay, so your radio does have recent firmware in it. Great.
Now let’s fix the dreadful manual by getting you a very much better manual. Click the link to download an improved Baofeng UV-5R manual. This improved manual was written by one person and then edited/annotated/corrected by a second, and between the two of them, is by far the best reference work for the radio currently available.
Here’s a second link to a great ‘cheat sheet’ for the keyboard programming options the radio comes with (written by the same guy who annotated the excellent manual above). Grab a copy of that, too.
3. Software to Manage Your Radio
Okay, so now you have an up-to-date radio and a great manual and keyboard (as in ‘the keyboard on the radio itself’) programming ‘cheat sheet’. The next thing you need is good software to program and manage all the radio’s settings and the 128 different channels that can be stored in its memory.
This assumes you have already purchased a programming cable for the radio that connects between a computer USB port and the radio’s mike/speaker connector. If you haven’t done so, you’ll, about now, be discovering just how essential this is! Here’s a link to the programming cables on Amazon. Go and get one.
Note that some cables are for the baby brother of the UV-5R – the UV-3R Don’t get that – it uses a different connector.
And there’s no need to pay extra money to get the cable and software. Just get the cable, because the Baofeng software it comes with is only slightly better than the Baofeng manual the radio comes with. Again, you’re going to replace the inferior provided software with very much better, and free, software.
Once you have your cable, go to the CHIRP website and download their software. There are versions for PCs, Macs, and Linux.
The CHIRP software will enable you to program both the radio’s general settings (things such as squelch levels, backlight settings, scan mode, and so on) and also the specific settings for each of its 128 memory channels. You’ll find this amazingly easier and more straightforward than struggling either with programming the radio from its own keypad, or through the Baofeng software.
Here’s a great guide to what the various CHIRP fields mean for programming the channels.
4. Choosing Your Frequencies
Now for the fun part. There are 128 memories in the radio, and you can load frequencies of your choice into them. But what frequencies will you load in?
We suggest programming some FRS/GMRS/MURS frequencies into the radio, plus some ham frequencies too (assuming you’re a bona fide licensed ham). These are discussed below.
We suggest you use some sort of standard frequency numbering scheme – although you can (and should) also program frequency names, it is helpful to have some sort of self-interpreting channel numbers, too.
For example, we have channels 1 – 9 for high priority high usage ‘general’ channels. These include the standard national calling channels (eg 446 MHz) as well as a few local repeater channels that give good coverage, and our own group’s calling channels.
We then have channels 11 – 24 for FRS, 25 – 29 for MURS, 31-8 and 41-8 for GMRS simplex channels, and 51-58 for GMRS duplex channels. We have channels 61 – 99 for various other repeaters and specific channels for specific services, then channels 100+ for ‘interesting’ local channels we like to monitor (public safety, etc).
The reason for naming channels is so that when you hear a transmission on an unfamiliar frequency, its name might give you a clue as to what you are hearing.
Note that these radios are not ideally suited for scanning purposes – mainly because their scanning rate is too slow. By the time they’ve cycled through 100 or so channels and returned to channel one, more than 30 seconds has passed. This means you can miss entire conversations. If you really want to scan multiple channels, you should get a separate standalone high-speed scanner, or at the very least, get multiple UV-5R radios and program each one to only a limited number of channels.
4.1 FRS/GRMS/MURS Frequencies
In several of our other articles about handheld radios we’ve discussed the grey legality of using these radios as FRS/GMRS/MURS radios. It is up to you how you personally resolve this issue, and perhaps suffice it to say that if you wanted to program the channels in to your radio so you could at least monitor and listen to the channels, that would be perfectly legal. It is only if/when you transmit that you possibly trespass to the dark side of the grey area.
The good news is that the CHIRP software has these frequencies already available for you to copy in to your radio. Go to Radio – Import from Stock Config and select the frequencies you want and decide which channels to import them to.
You’ll see that CHIRP has the eight GMRS repeater frequency pairs in its stock configuration. That is great for using the radios with GMRS repeaters, but if you wanted to transmit/receive on the frequency paired channels in simplex mode (ie both transmitting and receiving on the same frequency) you’d want to import the frequencies a second time and edit them to simplex using the transmit frequency, then a third time and edit them to simplex using the receive frequency.
Note also the first seven of the FRS frequencies are the shared FRS/GMRS frequencies.
Our article Explaining the Confusion of Frequencies and Channels with FRS & GMRS Radios provides some much-needed clarification on these matters.
It is helpful to have all these frequencies programmed if you want to scan/monitor the frequency bands to pick up on other people nearby. But if you’re only interested in using the radios for your own use, then you don’t need every last frequency entered and maybe it keeps things simpler to just have a few frequencies stored in memory.
4.2 Ham Frequencies
Find out who your local frequency coordinator group is. If you have a copy of the helpful and annual (but not always up-to-date or complete) ARRL Repeater Directory you’ll find listings to local groups in the front; a bit of ‘detective work’ through Google and the ARRL site will often get you to the appropriate groups as well. Hopefully the frequency coordinating group has a website and hopefully you can download a set of repeater frequencies from them.
The CHIRP software also links you to some online services (Radio – Import from Data Source) that have many of the local frequencies already in suitable format for you to automatically transfer over to your radio. If you do this, it pays to check the data with the local frequency coordinator group if possible – generally the local frequency coordinator group has the latest and best information to refer to.
You’ll find it helpful to understand which repeaters you can access, and you’ll want to build up an understanding of the coverage areas of such repeaters. In the event of an emergency that does not immediately destroy such repeaters, they will be one of your preferred means of communicating with other members of your group, especially if some of the group are not within direct/simplex range.
Usually the repeater listings tell you approximately where the repeaters are located, so that gives you a good helpful start to understanding which ones might be relevant – both around your local normal area where you live and work, and on any routes from there to where your retreat is, and of course, repeaters in/around your retreat.
It is hard to know whether repeaters will remain operable or not in any sort of emergency scenario. If the repeater is only powered from mains/grid power (perhaps with an hour or two of UPS battery as backup for brief power cuts) then clearly, as soon as it loses power, it goes down, and it stays down until mains power is restored.
But if the repeater is solar-powered (and an appreciable number are) then it is much more resilient to interruptions in the normal world. You should find out about your local repeaters, and maybe join the appropriate groups/clubs that own and maintain them, and subtly lobby for making the repeater grid-independent.
You’ll actually find you have a fair measure of support for such concepts. While not all hams are preppers, many enjoy the thought of being able to participate and assist in minor regional emergencies – temporary Level 1 type scenarios, and within that concept, the idea of making a repeater as robust as possible will find plenty of support.
4.3 Other ‘Interesting’ Local Frequencies to Monitor
You can use resources such as www.radioreference.com and www.scannerstuff.com and www.mygmrs.com and www.interceptradio.com to get lists of local frequencies used variously by public safety, local, state and federal government, and all types of businesses from the local fast-food joint to mall security companies and just about every other type of radio user imaginable.
It can be interesting listening to some of these frequencies, and you might think of some tactical advantages to being able to monitor some of them as well – both while life is comfortable and normal, and in an uncertain future if things start to go suddenly very wrong.
However, remember that these radios are not fully featured when it comes to advanced scanning, and they can’t monitor digital or trunked frequencies at all. If these are things you want to monitor (and increasingly the more ‘interesting’ radio channels are on digital/trunked systems), you’ll need other equipment.
At the risk of stating the obvious, just because you have a radio that is theoretically capable of listening and transmitting on any particular frequency, that does not mean that you are allowed to do so.
4.4 Weather Frequencies
Not a separate function, but an often overlooked capability, is to program in the NOAA Weather Radio channels.
There are seven of them, in the VHF band. If you are getting low on spare channels, you could just program in the one or two for the areas you expect to be (the preceding link takes you to pages that list the locations and coverage areas for each transmitter); otherwise, it is easy to put all seven into your radio (and CHIRP has them preloaded to copy over – go to the Radio – Import from Stock Config option).
162.400
162.425
162.450
162.475
162.500
162.525
162.550
5. A Note on Frequencies
The Baofeng UV-5R series of radios will receive and transmit on FM modulated VHF frequencies between 136-174MHZ and on FM modulated UHF frequencies between 400-480/520MHz.
It will also receive only (but not transmit) on FM modulated VHF frequencies between 65 – 108 MHz.
First, to explain the UHF range. Many times the radios might be specified as having an upper range of 480 MHz, but (at least for the more recent firmware units) the upper range is actually 520 MHz. Trust us on this – we’ve tested to confirm.
Second, there is a problem with very inexpensive radios being freely available. Sometimes people buy them who, ahem, probably shouldn’t. We regularly see ridiculous claims from people on websites, saying that they have managed to modify their UV-5R radios to receive (and presumably transmit, too) on other frequencies – not just slight extensions of the official frequency ranges, but all the way up to 1 GHz and down to only a few MHz.
We’ve also read other people saying they have modified their radios to receive AM as well as FM signals.
Both these types of claims are physically impossible, and are outright utter nonsense. We can’t comment as to the mental health of people who make such claims, but the unavoidable electrical and electronic reality is that – no matter what you can get the display on the front of the radios to show – they will not work outside the frequency ranges they have been designed to operate on. We will concede that with increasingly poor performance, maybe you could extend the two bands by about 5% – 10% at each end, but beyond that, the circuitry just will not work.
And as for receiving AM signals on an FM radio, that’s also not electrically/electronically possible.
We all like to get something for nothing, but don’t risk damaging your radios by trying these nonsense modifications. They can’t work, they don’t work, and they won’t work.
6. Broadcast FM Radio
In addition to being able to transmit and receive on its two bands, the Baofeng UV-5R has a bonus feature. It also has a good quality extended FM broadcast band receiver in it, which allows you to receive but not transmit on both the regular broadcasting FM band (88-108 MHz) and also on the 65-88MHz frequencies too.
There’s not a lot of activity in the 65-88MHz part of the spectrum (that’s putting it mildly) and the radio only tunes in 100 kHz steps in this mode. However, the regular FM radio capability is convenient.
You can’t store FM channels in the radio’s memories, but you can use the scan function to jump from one radio station to the next.
7. Some Settings to Consider
The radio has a lot of configurable options, either through keyboard programming or via the CHIRP software. Most items can be left at their default setting, and the per channel items for each channel can be configured as is needed.
There are a few settings to consider, however.
7.1 Squelch
The squelch setting can be varied from 0 (squelch off, you get all background noise all the time) up to 9 (very high squelch, only strong signals punch through).
The radio is set to a default value of 5. Different people have different approaches and opinions about squelch, and you should adopt an approach that reflects your needs.
If you only want to use your radio for local communications, then set the squelch level for one or two numbers lower than the level necessary to ensure that it always ‘opens’ when receiving signals from the furtherest away place with the poorest radio signals that you want to receive from. By having a higher number squelch setting, you’ll be less troubled by other weak signals, especially ones that many times are too weak to really understand.
But if you want to hear the other guy’s transmissions before he hears yours, and if you want to be sure to pick up even very weak signals, just for the knowing that there are oth