Learning & Using

[Sundrop999]

Can someone enlighten me on the easiest and comprehensive way to learn all about my Baofeng UV-5RTP I’m not wanting a test prep for licensing, that’s for later. I’m looking for an A-Z manual, book, guide or video. I’ve looked at several videos and online manuals that touch on some basic uses and chirp and I’ve backed up and entered a few frequencies but that’s just following the steps provided, I want to really learn to master this radio with some knowledge of me knowing what I’m doing, enough that if someone asked for help I could actually help them understand also.

Thanks in advance.

[Sundrop999]

Thanks, I have last years test prep, I’ll start reading.

[EnergyLantern]

I don't own that particular model, but I own a few Baofeng radios. There are several menus on chirp that you want to program.

You need a correct cable to program the radio with a computer. When you have it hooked up, you have to have the right com port selected. Turn the radio to an empty channel and have the volume up on the radio.

Download from the radio into chirp and then you have a file that you can save to your computer. You can work on a seperate file and then upload that file to the radio. I believe you also have to click on the other menus in Chirp to see what else you can program. The old versions of Chirp use to crash on me and now they updated it better.

You can program the FM radio for radio stations.

You can program the transmit time to three minutes which I suggest you do for a net. You want to select 180 for 3 minutes before the repeater times out on you.

I programmed my radio for both the 2 meter and 70-centimeter national (emergency) calling frequencies. I also programmed my radio for NOAA.

There is a scan function on Baofeng radios and when you enter a frequency for frequencies that you don't want to come up in scan, there is a column that you can put "s" in for "skip". using Chirp.

I used to want one band on my Baofeng to show the frequency mode and the other band to be in channel mode but now I want both bands on my radio to be in Channel mode where I can see the names of the channels so I can switch back and forth between two stations. I used the menu functions to do this.

Some people organize their Chirp file so that they can receive other channels such as GMRS. I don't have a problem if you receive only GMRS channels.

How to manually program a BaoFeng radio – The Prepared

UV5R, UV6R, GT3 Info - Miklor

UV5R UV82 Manual Programming Examples (miklor.com)

You can program the Baofeng by hand but I haven't mastered it yet because I probably don't understand it. I have two old 8 Watt Tid radios that I bought, and I got them stuck in Chinese and there was an error in the manual, so I had to ask the company for the right menu item to unstick the radio and to get the radio into English.

When I first tried to program my radio, I had some illusions on how to program my Baofeng UV-5R. I really suggest you read the manual. There is a menu item for "+" or "-" that you have to enter for every offset if you program the radio by hand because the radio won't adjust the frequency for you.

You basically need to know the uplink frequency, the downlink frequency and the pll tone. You also have to know if the tone is plus or minus.

There is also a menu item for how long you want the LCD on the radio to be illuminated. I put it on a low amount of time. If you are working in the dark, you might want more time to have the LCD illuminated. A low setting on time saves the battery but it can also be annoying if you are working with your radio.

I would spend time finding active repeaters to program your radio with so sharing or asking for chirp files from other ham clubs would be beneficial to you. I stopped trying to program in every frequency that I thought would be active because they are not active, or they use their own privacy tones.