Radios and Radio Accessories

Post your favorite radio and radio accessories!

Also, Is the Baofeng UV-5R an overhyped radio, or does it promise what people have said about it? I need a radio for going hiking as well as communicating with my friends on the go.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=pgg-FxTJT50
rtl-sdr.com/tag/radio-direction-finding/
pastebin.com/9uYXMhVm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

It broadcasts on harmonics quite a bit.
Included antenna is a piece of shit, but the NA-771 or NA-701 are a cheap decent improvement.
Programming in a repeater offset and tone is a pain in the ass because the menus suck.
If the price is right though.

Also, are you a ham? If not the value of the radio goes down a significantly because aren't a lot of frequencies you can legally use this guy on.
Using it on frs/gmrs frequencies won't piss anyone off enough to start trying to locate you.
Spoilers: Hams with nothing better to do hide and locate transmitters for fun.

>Is the Baofeng UV-5R an overhyped radio

The hype is not because they're good.

The hype is because they're cheap and often good enough.

So let me get this straight, I can't just tune into frequencies and listen in without being a licensed operator? How do they find me if I do t say anything, does their hardware show how many connected users or something.

t. Bought a baofend for 50 dollarydoos

They can find you with pic related, a Spectrum Analyzer.

A good example of this would be:
youtube.com/watch?v=pgg-FxTJT50

Forgot the pic.

i have an UV-5R and it's basically fucking GOAT

ok, I'm from brazil and I have an UV-5R but I don't understand batshit from radio use. I use it only to listen to police chatter, finding the frequencies used by them with the scanner.
but the only frequencies I found are from standard police stations, and would really like to have a list with special ops frequencies and all.
taking advantage from this free speech place, ALGUEM AÍ SABE ONDE CONSIGO ACHAR UMA LISTA DE FREQUENCIAS DE RADIOS?

dumb asshole, he's never gonna be found if he's not transmiting

no, even if they found him transmitting they cant locate him, not without triangulation and that takes at least three people with direction finding antennas,

a spectrum analyser only shows a chunk of radio spectrum, i have a SDR that can show up to a 10 megahertz wide chunk of radio spectrum at a time but the wider the chunk is the harder it is to pinpoint individual transmissions, about a 200Khz wide chunk is good for practical purposes, 1 mhz wide is stretching its usefulness

>not without triangulation and that takes at least three people with direction finding antennas,

RDF doesn't require three people, it can be done with just one quad antenna nowadays - if you look at police cars used worldwide some of them will have quad mounted antennas on the trunk area in a tilted square formation that are used for RDF to locate stolen vehicles with LoJack transmitters.

RDF is vastly better than it was years past and can be done very accurately with just 4 antennas in a quad mount (you can build this shit yourself easily) and a laptop.

>not nearly as complicated as one might expect

rtl-sdr.com/tag/radio-direction-finding/

i have most of what it takes to put it together already and i didnt even know it, (THANKS!) i just need to buy two more dongles at 20 bucks a piece, throw some software on my lappy and i am good to go

rtl-sdr.com/tag/radio-direction-finding/

Some cheapo radios leak intermediate frequency (IF) signal from the mixers and this leak can be detected. Not sure if the Baofeng has this problem but it should not be dismissed entirely.

>triangulation and that takes at least three people with direction finding antennas
DF takes on receiver, triangulation takes two. Some systems (read: mil. can do single site localization. A Wullenweber can do that, see link below.

Also:
pastebin.com/9uYXMhVm

Motorola XTS5000

>dat P25 digital
>dat AES256 encryption

Yes, you can listen without being licensed

I have a UV-82. Listening to old people chat on the local repeaters was fun for the first night. Now, it collects dust until I have a use for it when fishing/hiking/camping.

Oh man what a great thread.

I'm a ham but I'm mainly active on HF. I do have some HTs (VX3, VX8) but this baby (loaded with all options) is my pride and joy:

Post rares.

>Some cheapo radios leak intermediate frequency (IF) signal from the mixers and this leak can be detected. Not sure if the Baofeng has this problem but it should not be dismissed entirely.
Almost all radios leak user. and can be easily detected. The Nazis were doing it in WWII in vans, today the hardware fits into your hand easily.

R20 master race, still best handheld wide band receiver on the market.

I bought 2 UV-5R for 44USD.

They are miles ahead of the cheap "up to x km" walkie talkies.

That's because half a watt is worthless

The Icom IC-R30-06 has extremely wide coverage (exact coverage range unknown). Modes of reception include: FM, WFM, AM, (SSB) USB, LSB, CW and digital modes to be announced. It is expected to include an effective sprectrum display and also support dual receive including analog/analog and analog/digital.

The R30-06 included accessories have not been announced.

The R30-11 GOVT model is the same as the IC-R30-00 , but without the 824-849 / 869-894 MHz cellular gap and can be purchased by the Federal government or for export only.

Ya I saw that, I wonder how the battery does.

The R-20's lithium battery seems to last forever.

My suspicion is that this new rig will have considerably less battery life, but it will have digital and trunking.

I've got the Tecsun PL-660 for listening to shortwave. It's a nice radio for about $100.

I also got the Baofeng UV82 for CB, but I might get my HAM license one day.

What kind of range could I realistically expect to get in a hiking scenario with these? I want to get one for me and my girlfriend, but I've heard it's illegal to broadcast with these? Can someone please clarify? I would prefer something like this instead of a cheap set of Motorola Talk-abouts from Costco, but will the range of these be better and will I get raped by the police if I use these?

Depending on your country you might have CB bands that are open and free to use without a license. I think because they are too high powered and have removable antennas, the regular walkie talkie bands are a no-go.

Don't take my word though, I'm new to this stuff.

VX-6R user here. Been a licensed ham for many years.

Okay thank you. So could i hypothetically put a baofeng on the same frequency as the Coscto walki talkies and communicate with them?

Yes you can and it works. You will need set up the right transmit ctcs/dcs tone on the baofeng if the walkie talkie doesn't receive what you send from the baofeng.

Legality depends on your country but nobody gives a shit and you won't have any issues if you use the same frequencies as normal walkie talkies.

Great info, much appreciated! One more question. If I got 2 baofengs then, and set them both to walki talkie frequency's, what range would I be able to conservatively expect? For example, the walkie talkies at coscto advertise "over 20 miles".

am sync eh

They will go further than your costco walkie talkies but how far they will go depends on the terrain.

You can increase the range by replacing the antennas on the baofengs with something better.

Forget the "can go up to X miles" notation. It's dumb and doesn't mean anything.

Okay will do. I'm just looking for a very rough and coarse figure, i completely understand it deoends on many factors. In a lightly forested terrain, with the standard antenna that come with them... Am I to expect 5 miles, 10, 30? Just looking to get a rough ballpark.

>2016
>radio

at one point i went too deep in this chinese radio business i ended getting this one because of its RX coverage (up to 900 something mhz)
its all around better than a uv-5r
i have like 4 uv-5r

Yeah, you should be able to get 5 miles in those conditions.

Things like hills in between really kill the range though.

Can anyone recommend me a trunking scanner for maybe $100 or less? I'm interested in using it as a police and fire scanner. It doesn't have to be the best just enough to do the job

how long's the battery last?

if you have that kind of budget your best bet is a survey of the used market user

lots of scanner reviews at eham.net

oh boy while mostly receiving police chatter in a mid-sized town i'd say about 30 odd hours

eBay or craigslist, and think about the area you intend to monitor because if it's gone digital then an analog scanner will not help and you're not going to find a digital capable model for under at least $180 these days in good working condition, probably $220+ in most spots.

If you don't need to be mobile, get an RTL stick and go from there using SDR# and learn how to make use of SDR technology which is gaining in popularity - you can do stuff with a "cheap USB TV tuner" that costs $10-25 depending on which one you get that $500-600 scanners still can't do all that well, and a lot more.