Episode: 2307
Title: HPR2307: Baofeng UV5R VHF/UHF Handset part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2307/hpr2307.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:05:00

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Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience. My name is Mr X. As usual I'd like to start
by thanking the people HBR for making this service available. If we all contributed a show
with more shows than we know what to do with, the show is provided by the community for the community.
It's actually very easy. They've gone to a great deal of effort to streamline the whole process
and it's really quite, quite easy. The hardest part I find is getting down to rightness,
the show notes. It's just about picking up a microphone and hitting the record button.
We should must have something interesting that we'd all love to hear.
Okay, on this episode of the podcast I'm going to describe all the outer controls around
the outside edge of the both in UV5R. Hopefully won't be too rambly and hopefully won't be too boring.
But remember this all can fallen's fault. Okay, so let's now cover the
detailed description of controls around the case. So we take the actual radio itself and we'll
go around the outside edge first of all. So looking from the front right hand side,
you'll have a plastic cover which has letters SP and MIC on it. SP presumably is for speaker
and MIC is presumably for mic. I'll just open this up. Now I don't think the radio is not waterproof
for any of that, but obviously that cover helps if there's light rain or whatever I suppose.
So when you flip that open, you get two jack plugs. Jack plug, according to Wikipedia,
a phone connector also known as a phone jack, audio jack, headphone jack or jack plug,
is a common family of electrical connectors typically used for analog signals,
primarily audio and they usually come in 3.5 and 2.5 millimeter sizes.
Controversially Apple is removing these, well the 3.5 from their latest iPhone I believe.
I actually had a conversation with a Phil amateur recently and they was talking about a weakness
on the both thing UV5R in that the audio can cut out from the radio and this is
related to using the speaker jack on the radio and I said that people were just
when that happened they just threw them in the bucket, but they said that it came across
an article in a website and I'll see if I can find it, which does get how to get around that.
Now I don't know if you still do some of the functionality of the actual speaker once doing
speaker socket once you do this, but it allows the audio to come through the main speaker of the
radio again, which is what happens at cuts out supposedly. What these things do is that when the
jack plug is pushed into the socket, it pushes a contact as it makes contact, but as it does that,
it moves it and breaks connection with another contact, which then disconnects the
the speaker inside the radio so that when you plug headphones in, the radio stops making an
always basically and something must be going wrong with that socket and side obviously.
In fact, I've now noticed a problem with my own handset, if I push it slightly too far in then
the audio from the covert earpiece cuts in and out a little bit. I haven't noticed any
problem with the radio itself, but the earpiece is a bit iffy when you push it in, but it seems
to be more to do with the socket and the radio and not the actual earpiece, so maybe I'm going to
have a problem like that in due course as well, so that's something to bear to think about.
These sockets are a bit iffy anyway. I have these, it seems to think on my
Sansa clip, and for that reason alone, I never take the earpiece out because if you leave them
alone, they'll perfectly find these sockets, but if you're constantly pulling them in and out,
they fairly quickly fail. You can get more professional versions of these sockets and plugs and
they're more robust. I've got the kind of large version of these and they're not 3.5,
they're the bigger ones, which I don't know what size it is, but it's the ones that they use in
guitars and guitar amps, and I've got one of those on my big HF radio, which I have.
It's got a very solid snap, clicked it when you push the socket in, and that's very good quality.
You can get good quality sockets and plugs, but generally they tend to be cheap, so that's something
to watch out for. These two sockets can also be used to program the radio if you can get a
programming cable and with the correct programming cable and software, you can load frequencies and
settings into it and such like, that's very useful. The next control round is a volume control.
It's a variable resistor, a real starter, potentiometer, and as you turn it, the resistance varies
on this device, which in turn adjusts the volume of the audio to the speaker. It also has a
switch intake integrated into it, which you can hit, click when you switch it on, you may be
heard that, there you go, that turns the radio off and on. A slight problem I found with that is that
being on the top, if it sits on your built clip, it can actually be moved as you're walking
and can gradually bring the volume of the radio down, so that's maybe not terribly clever.
My more expensive older amateur radio handset has a side volume control and it's kind of
shouted a little bit to protect it and it never moves, so perhaps a slight weakness in the design,
but really self-antastic for the value, so that's that. The next control on the device is you
work your way around on the top. There's a kind of clear LED on the top, so LED is a
light emitting diode, a diode is a semiconductor, so-called because under certain conditions,
it will conduct and in the other conditions it won't. You can think of a diode as being a bit
like a non-return valve used in plumbing and that it would end up to allow electricity to flow
in one direction, but not the other. A diode can be manufactured in such a way that it will emit
light and voltage with a correct polarity as applied.
LEDs were first when I hatched their 1960s, they have many advantages over conventional bulbs,
such as producing very little heat, low energy consumption, longer life time and improved
physical robustness. It's remarkably useful this LED, you're wondering what place it's
going to be able to do with you and it can be a bit of a dark to just tap a button and the
light comes on and you can see what you're doing. It's amazing how useful it is.
The next control on the devices is the antenna socket and this uses an SME connector, they call it SME.
And of course I didn't look at what SME stands for. That's how we look.
Connector. SME Sub-Manager version A connectors are SME Precision Coaxial RF connectors developed
in 1960 as a minimal connector interface for a coaxial cable with a screw-type coupling mechanism.
The connector has a 50 ohm impedance. SME is designed for use from DC to 18 gigahertz,
but it is most commonly encountered with Wi-Fi antenna systems and USB
software-defined radio dongles. So there you go, that's for the SME stands for. That's what SME stands
for. Sub-Manager version A. I never knew that. Now where was I? Yes.
So I was wondering about the connector on this. It's a reverse SME. So it's opposite of what
you normally get. It's a reverse SME to SME. You need a reverse SME to SOS239 adapter if you're
thinking of attaching a larger radio to the radio. As the SME connector is a reverse gender to the
usual socket found on radios like this. I haven't as yet looked into this, but I'm sure it will be
easily enough to pick up online. The next control on the radio is the call button.
When the handset is turned on and is in the receive mode, a short push of this button turns
on the FM broadcast radio allowing you to listen to normal FM radio stations. Another short push
will turn the handset to normal operation. The FM radio broadcast will also turn off
if a signal appears on the frequency you were listening to before the call button was pushed.
A long push of the call button when in receive mode will flash the word alarm on the button
on the bottom line of the LCD display. The front TXRX LED will flash alternatively red and green.
The top white LED blinks quickly and audio aspiring is broadcasted simultaneously through the
handset slot speaker and on a predefined frequency set up during programming. A short push of the
call button will cancel the alarm and return the radio to normal operation. There's not enough
a lot of use for that and I'm going to use it obviously, but interesting nonetheless.
The next button around, down from the call button, it's a larger button so it's easier for your
finger to get onto because you're going to be using that this button the most and it's got the
words the letters PTT printed on it. So the PTT button stands for push to talk. The both thing UV5R
is equipped with a single received circuit and a single transmit circuit. When the push to talk
button is pushed it will deactivate the received circuit and activate the transmit circuit of the handset.
Releasing it will do the opposite. This is Simplex operation as the radio can either be in
receive mode or transmit mode but not both. Duplex handsets are available with a single transmit
circuit and two received circuits allowing the radio to receive two signals at the same time.
One of the received circuits is switched off when the PTT is pushed and the transmitter is then
activated allowing the radio to both receive and transmit at the same time. This makes the
radio operate more like a mobile phone which is in fact how mobile phone or cordless phone works
by transmitting and receiving at the same time. Duplex radios are substantially more complex
and therefore more expensive than the both thing UV5R.
The next button along is the monitor button at MON, MON, the monitor button. This button opens
a radio squelch according to Wikipedia and telecommunications squelch is a circuit function
that acts to suppress the audio output of a receiver in the absence of a sufficiently strong
desired input signal. Squelch is widely used in two radio and radio scanners to suppress the
sound of channel noise when the radio is not receiving a transmission. Squelch can be opened
which allows all signals entering the receiver to be heard. This can be useful when trying to hear
a distance or otherwise weak signal. So I'll just turn that the radio on and let you hear that.
So there you go, that's the radio on. So when I push and hold the monitor button down, you'll hear
there you go and if I release the button then it stops.
If you, what I forgot to mention is if you momentarily touch this PTT button, this monitor button,
then the top LED light comes on. If you touch it a second time, it flashes rapidly and if you
touch it a third time, the LED goes off. It's a dual function, the mod button,
long press for for opening the squelch and short press for
activating the top LED which is said before is extremely useful. So that covers all the controls
around outside of the Bo thing UV5R. Okay, that's about it for this podcast. Hope you enjoyed it,
hope it wasn't too boring. If you want to contact me, I can be contacted at MrX at hpr at googlemail.com
and that's mrx80hpr the at symbol googlemail.com. So until next time, thank you and goodbye.
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