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Baofeng UV-5R Instruction Manual
So, you finally did it. After buying the AARL Ham Radio License Manual and conducting
a crash
course in ham
radio, you got your license, and then promptly went out to buy the very popular
Baofeng UV-5R radio. Such has been a path traveled by thousands of other hams throughout the
years, and you've likely discovered the same thing that the rest of us have. Though the UV-5R is
an incredibly affordable radio – coming in at around $25 or so, giving you an introduction into
ham without too much expense – it is one of the most difficult radios to learn if you're operating
from the standard instruction manual they include.
It's often said that the UV-5R has the worst manual out of any radio within the ham
industry, and I'm convinced this is true. Figuring out how your new radio works can be
incredibly frustrating and can feel as if you've just wasted your time and money. The included
manual has been the direct cause of countless hams setting aside both their radio and their desire
to learn how to use amateur radio.
Thankfully, learning the UV-5R is possible. Let's take a look at what it takes to get your UV-5R
up and running. Consider this the basic manual that should have come in the box.
A Note on CHIRP Software
If you've done any bit of research into getting your UV-5R up and running at all, you've
software. It is widely used as an "easy" programming
undoubtedly heard reference to the
CHIRP
tool to program local repeaters into your UV-5R. I'm not going to even touch on it in this
manual.
In my opinion, CHIRP is one of the most user-unfriendly softwares that has ever been
created. It's absolutely terrible. I stared at CHIRP for hours and watched who-knows-how-many
YouTube videos to try to figure out what in the heck was going on. I'm serious, it's absolutely
ridiculous.
If you decide to go the route of CHIRP, just know that you're going to need to purchase a
specialized cable to attach from your UV-5R to your laptop. Older models of the UV-5R used to
allow "cloning" of different radios – meaning that if your buddy had a UV-5R already
programmed with all the local repeaters, you could just connect yours to his with another special
cable, and all of the data would be transferred to your UV-5R. For whatever reason, newer
models do not allow this.
The complete article is at:
https://www.shtfblog.com/a-better-baofeng-uv-5r-instruction-manual/
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Summary of Contents for Baofeng UV-5R
- Page 1 Baofeng UV-5R radio. Such has been a path traveled by thousands of other hams throughout the years, and you’ve likely discovered the same thing that the rest of us have. Though the UV-5R is an incredibly affordable radio – coming in at around $25 or so, giving you an introduction into ham without too much expense –...
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Page 2: Attaching Accessories
The type of antenna that comes in the box of your stock UV-5R is referred to as a “rubber duck.” It’s an absolute terrible antenna. One of the first pieces of advice that just about any seasoned ham operator (referred to as an “elmer”) will tell you is that your radio is only as good as... - Page 3 UV-5R, you just need to make sure that it is compatible with a Kenwood 2-pin connector. Just make sure that the radio is off before you attach any accessories.
- Page 4 How to Switch Between Channel and Frequency Mode Your UV-5R has two different modes that you can listen to: Channel mode and Frequency mode. You use channel mode to quickly access the frequencies that you have programmed your radio to remember. This...
- Page 5 How to Change the Channel You’re On If you’ve already programmed in a bunch of frequencies into your UV-5R’s memory, you can easily switch back and forth among them by changing the channels. To do so, first ensure that you are in Channel Mode.
- Page 6 First, you must first be in Frequency Mode. You can access this mode by hitting the “VFO/MR” button. There are two different aspects of changing frequency on a UV-5R to remember: you can change the frequency that you’re listening to, and you can also change the frequency that you’re transmitting on.
- Page 7 Broadcast FM is what most people call “the radio.” This is the series of channels that you listen to music to while you’re driving in your car. For example, 94.6 may be a popular country music channel where you live. You can listen to these frequencies on your UV-5R. You have to push the orange ”CALL”...
- Page 8 Your UV-5R can has both a Low-Power and High-Power mode. To switch back and forth between the two, you must first switch to Channel Mode.
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Page 9: How To Lock The Keypad
How to Lock the Keypad Perhaps you need to place your UV-5R in your pocket or are in some other situation where you don’t want the buttons of the radio to accidentally get pressed and mess up your current settings. In this case, you can lock the keypad. - Page 10 Ways to Change Scanning Preferences There are three different scanning modes that can be used with the UV-5R. You can set it to: 1. scan until it detects a signal, and then resume scanning after a pre-set time of no activity on that frequency (Time Operation);...
- Page 11 How to Change the Backlight Color Perhaps you don’t like the default backlight color for the display screen of your UV-5R radio. You can change it to a color that you prefer. You must first hit the “MENU” key. You can change the backlight color for when you are in Standby Mode, when you’re receiving a...
- Page 12 Odds are that due to the amount of work involved for such, you’ll want to save all of this as a memory channel within your UV-5R. To do such, hit the “*/SCAN” key to go into reverse mode, and then save that to the same memory channel.
- Page 13 There’s a lot more that your UV-5R is capable of, but that’s beyond the scope of this piece If you have a firm understanding of the above, however, you’ll most certainly be able to get your money’s worth out of your UV-5R and be able to use it to get and transfer the information that...