The ads on this site help pay for hosting and other costs associated with developing CHIRP.Please consider disabling your ad-blocking software on this site to help keep CHIRP free.There is, in most cases, almost no actual difference between the variants, which is very confusing for customers.Researching posts on this multireddit I created of various subreddits dedicated to Ham Radio, I learned a lot about the current state of ham radio and some ways to get back into the hobby.
I would like to share the results of programming my new Baofeng UV-5RH on my Mac running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2. Reviews generally say it is an ok radio, especially for a beginner. While certainly no Yaesu VX-6R, it does exactly what I need: getting me on the radio. If it turns out to be a junk radio in the long run or if my interest drops again, Im only out less than 100. To counter this, it was suggested that I use a special USB cable to connect the Baofeng to my computer, where the application CHIRP allows for fairly easy programming of the radio. There are apparently many cheap (8-10) USB cables that use cloned or reverse engineered chipsets. Programming Baofeng Uv 5R Using Chirp Driver Incompatibility IssuesThis leads to a lot of driver incompatibility issues, flakey connection issues, etc. I found many blog and forum posts (which I wont link to) mentioning various drivers to install to work around these problems, but I was not going to settle for that. I dont have the time and patience to deal with driver issues (thats why I have a Mac) and I dont like the thought of downloading drivers from some random web site. Reviews said that no drivers needed to be installed manually for Macs and many versions of Windows, as the OS automatically recognized the cable. The daily builds also enable new settings you can program, including setting the Squelch. Programming Baofeng Uv 5R Using Chirp Download From RadioI then select the Radio menu and click on Download From Radio. On that same Radio menu I mentioned above, you can import data from various repeater directories (I use RepeaterBook) right into the Baofeng UV-5R. After getting used to the clunky menu system, I can hear repeaters as far as 19 miles away from Manchester, NH, which is rather impressive performance. Ill probably try to contact someone today and test out the signal strength. That is arriving today, so Ill give it a try and report back on it. A good solid antenna will be needed when I go hiking in the mountains this summer. If this turns out to be a decent handheld rig for 75, that will keep my occupied for awhile.
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