5 ms·
As a pinch of salt... If you can get a baofeng to last out of the box longer than a week, and manage to DX a handheld or a repeater further than a parking spac
by nimbius 6y ago
As a pinch of salt...
If you can get a baofeng to last out of the box longer than a week, and manage to DX a handheld or a repeater further than a parking space away, you should at least win a QRP award and a discount on your technicians test before you get sent to the klink.
- mindcrime 6y agoI've been using my Baofeng for a couple of years now and have no problem working many repeaters here in the Triangle (NC) area. YMMV.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y agoSimilarly, my Baofeng has no problem on the many repeaters in the Northern Nevada area. Definitely YMMV.
- killtheliterate 6y agosame. it's a perfectly fine shitty radio. i have 3 of them that i keep stashed in various places. they certainly aren't as nice as my yaesu, and they do splatter, but they do work just fine.
- mindcrime 6y agoperfectly fine shitty radio Hah! What a great bit of word-smithing there. I love it. Yes, that's a good description of the Baofeng radios. They're crap, but they're fine crap. Cheap, but workable as a beginner radio. I bought mine right when I got my Technician license, and it's served well for dipping my toes in the water a little. But I'll be buying a higher quality radio soon, if all goes according to plan.
- eindiran 6y agoIf you were to recommend a beginner radio, is a Baofeng what you'd recommend?
- jrockway 6y agoIt depends on how much money you have, and how interested in VHF/UHF you are. If you're very interested in VHF/UHF (repeaters, simplex with your neighbors) and you only have $20, then it's the perfect radio for you. If you have $10,000 and want to chat with people around the world, then you'll want something else. People hear "ham radio" and think "chatting with people all around the world", but that is not what Baofeng radios do :)
- blhack 6y agoStrong disagree, and wish this sort of gatekeeping wasn't present. Go get one of these things. They're $20, and ham radio is a fun and useful hobby. I have many baofeng radios which have been in many forms of being thrown into boxes, backpacks, filled with dust, rained on, abused by drunks, dropped, etc. and they ALL are still working fine, albeit some with dest behind the LCD cover.
- nimbius 6y agoOh its not gatekeeping. You get what you pay for. My baofeng 5 died two hours into a 12 mile backpackign trip across catalina island. It couldn't do a quarter mile line of sight with an airport 2m amateur tower and when turning on the flashlight feature in my tent it died entirely and would not power back on. I was entirely reliant on it for ranger station as well as general comms and phone patch/weather. Packing this plastic trash couldnt have been more dangerous. Programming is also a byzantine nightmare.
- blhack 6y agoHow is it a "byzantine nightmare"? I plug it into my computer, put in the frequencies (and names I want for the channels.), and upload the configuration. That seems pretty straightforward to me.
- jimktrains2 6y agoIm pretty aure they meant programming from the radio itself, without using a computer.
- sbierwagen 6y agoAs a fun ham toy, it's fine. For critical safety-of-life communication... do you want to be using any amateur radio? Maybe you'd want a Motorola or ICOM cop radio.
- stormcode 6y agoAgreed. I've had two $25 baofengs for camping / outdooring for... Four or five years. Both work fine. They don't see a ton of use but they have been banging around camping bins and glove boxes for that time. Batteries hold their charge well. Bonus-- they have FM radios. Weirdly the only thing in my house powered by batteries that does!
- throwaway09223 6y agoNonsense. I bought a baofeng years ago and it works perfectly well. It's a basic, cheap radio well suited for beginners.
- sitzkrieg 6y agofreely ignore that comment, they're actually fine radios that work well and there is heaps of proof of such
- sbierwagen 6y agoI've had a UV-5R for four years. Receives fine. The handful of times I've used it to transmit on a local net nobody mentioned vomiting in disgust at its poor transmission characteristics. The original battery even still holds a charge, which I really didn't expect, since it's probably spent 3.9 years sitting on the charger being kept at the float voltage.
- Johnythree 6y agoHow would people on the same band be aware that it is radiating harmonics?
- buck4roo 6y agoHave both, still love my 15+yo Yaesu VX-5R way more than the UV-5R. I won't be getting more Baofengs.
- jhallenworld 6y agoI had a VX-7R- it was nice, but I didn't use it enough for the amount of money sunk into it, so I sold. I bought a UV-5x3 when I again wanted an HT. It's pretty good- I like that it now has alphanumeric channel memory and I get to see what's happening on 220 MHz. But this is a $90 radio...