Before You Use Your Baofeng UV-5R, Change These Settings! - How To Change Menu Options On A UV5R

guess what i got a fever and the only prescription is more baofang studies have shown that there are more baofeng uv5rs in use in the world today than any other radio all other radios combined and this is because as any licensed ham radio operator will tell you the baufang uv5r is the best engineered best radio you can buy and so because these radios are so popular and because so many of the owners of these radios are too lazy to read the manual or go online and look up what the menu options mean i'm going to go over the most important options for the uv 5r and show you how to change them i'm going to point out the options that if you're going to change anything you really need to change these nine options or at least be aware of what they are as with every one of my videos that i have ever posted i won't waste your time with a stupid intro and fancy graphics and music i won't beg for you to subscribe or join like so many other youtubers do wasting your time i know that your time is just too valuable and too important to ever waste like that [Music] so i have my uv5r and you'll notice that there is no antenna connected you don't need to leave a comment pointing out that there's no antenna connected i know because i took it off i take the antenna off so they don't poke my eye out while i'm recording and so it doesn't hit the overhead camera but i also take it off because i don't have a ham radio operator's license and without a ham radio operator's license if i were to press this button with an antenna connected i would be in violation of the law and i don't want to make any ham radio operators sad by doing that now i know that pressing the transmit button which i may do from time to time as i'm going through this video without an antenna attached can damage the radio do not do this at home but if i press the transmit button while there's no antenna attached it will be momentarily only and i'm willing to take that risk for you my favorite viewer now one other thing about the uv-5r i do want to thank the sad ham that just left a comment on one of my last videos pointing out how dangerous this were his words that was his word that he used in the comment how dangerous it can be to transmit on a uv5r without first checking the uv5r on your rf spectrum analyzer for spurious rf emissions so i looked it up thousands of children are killed every year from irresponsible parents not taking the time to check for spurious rf output using their spectrum analyzer so let's all take a lesson from that ham radio licensed ham radio operator that took the time to give us that warning about how dangerous using uv 5r can be alright enough making fun of morons that leave comments on my videos so let's go over the important settings that you should know about and will probably want to change before using your uv5r so the first option that you're going to want to change or at least be aware of is the squelch option the squelch on these radios these are great little radios but for 25 bucks they're not perfect and the squelch on these radios kind of sucks and by that i mean it's either on or off so if you have the squelch set too low you're gonna hear nothing but static and if you have it set too high you may not hear anybody talking at all i usually set mine around five that way i know that it's not going to be too high or too low and there's very little difference between too low and too high it's almost an on or off so to get to the squelch we're going to go into the menu and in the menu now i can scroll up and down using the arrow key to different menu options the squelch menu is the default the first one that comes up so it's already selected i'm going to hit menu again oop i waited too long i'm going to hit menu again and that's going to let me change the value which is on the lower line here so i can just use the up and down arrow key i'll set it at five and hit menu again and now it's saved so now if i use the exit key to go out of the menu if i go back i can see that squelch is set at five that's right in the middle so basically you want to make sure the squelch is not set to zero or to nine because that might be too high or too low now the next option is the transmitting power the default transmit power now there's not a huge amount of difference between the high and the low setting on these radios i usually set mine at low because that's going to make the battery last longer there's only like a one or two watt difference depending on what frequency you're transmitting on and honestly it really doesn't make a huge amount of difference in distance so if you're just talking to somebody within a mile of you low or high isn't going to make any difference as far as distance but it will make a difference on how hard it sucks down on your battery so to set the default power level setting i'm going to go to menu and i'm going to go to menu option 2. now i can could just use the up and down arrow key or when i'm in menu i can just hit number two and mine is currently set to high is going to be the default power level i'm going to change that so i hit menu and now i just use the up or down arrow key to low and i hit menu to confirm it and now you'll see the little l up there at the top of the screen indicating that it's on low power now that is the default power setting for any new channel or any new frequency that you go to you can change the default for any channel or frequency see here that it's on low right now see the tiny l there by tapping on the pound key you can change it to high now that l is gone and on the uv5r when there's nothing there that means high if you have a bf f8hp which is the eight watt version you'll see a l for low m for medium h for high the next menu option is the battery save menu option which is option number three now on the screen it just says save which doesn't mean much but if you were to take the time to look it up and read it in the manual you'd see that menu option number three is battery saver and i always turn that off because what the battery saver does is it sets how frequently the radio is listening for new transmissions the lower the battery saving setting the more often it's checking listening the higher that battery save setting is the less frequent it's checking to see if there's any transmission so what that means is when your friend starts talking if the battery save level is set to high you may not hear the first word or two that he says because the radio wasn't listening so it'll sound like he started talking before he pressed the button so by turning the battery saver off you will always hear everything that he says and in my experience in using my uv5r my half a dozen uv5rs over the last few years it's never made a difference in actually how long the battery lasts or it's made no difference that i was able to see without measuring with scientific instruments they still lasted all day long i didn't see any difference so to turn the battery save off we're going to go to menu it's already on menu item 3 but if it wasn't i would just use the up and down arrow button hit menu again to select that menu option and go to off menu again to confirm the next option that we're going to turn off is tdr or dual watch and i hate this feature the uv5r allows you to listen to and transmit on two frequencies at once it's like having two radios so here you can see that the upper frequency is set to 444 445 the lower one is set to 462 600. so i can be listening i am now listening to both of these frequencies at the same time but i'm only going to talk on the one that has the little carrot down here the little icon and the issue that i always have i'll hear somebody talking on one of the two frequencies and i'll pick up the radio and get excited because they're talking to me and i'll start talking back to them but i haven't selected the right frequency so they don't hear me or somebody else hears me on the other frequency and they don't know what i'm talking about it gets too confusing to listen to and talk on two frequencies at once it's like holding two radios in your hand it gets very confusing so if you are like me and are a simpleton you can turn this feature off and i always do so to turn off the dual watch or tdr i'm going to hit menu and either use the up and down arrow buttons until i find it or because i know it's option seven just hit seven now i'm at the tdr option it's currently set to on i hit menu to go down to that line to change it arrow up until it's off menu to confirm it is now off now even though i still see the two different frequencies on the screen i use the a b button to control now i'm only listening to the upper frequency and only transmitting on the upper frequency or if i switch to the lower frequency now i'm only listening to and transmitting on the one frequency keeping it simple for us simpletons the next one that you should at least know about you may or may not want to turn it off it's a personal preference is the beep every time i hit a menu option it beeps and you may want to turn that beep off so to do that we go to menu we go to menu option number eight beep hit menu again and use the up and down arrow key to set it to off menu again to confirm now every time i hit a button it's silent i like it on a lot of people like it off so if you want it on or off now you know it's one of those ones that you can go in and change another one of those personal preference ones is the voice prompts notice how every time i hit a button you can hear the baufang lady talking to you you may get enough sass back from other females in your life already you don't need more from your stupid radio so to turn the voice prompting off go to menu scroll up and down through the options until we find voice prompt notice now it doesn't beep it's silent because i turn that off and here is the voice setting it's currently set to english or if you don't want that sass back from her turn it off the next item that we want to change especially if you're going to give your radio to your stupid friends to use is bcl busy channel lockout menu option number 23. what busy channel lockout does is if i key up the radio to start talking but somebody else is already transmitting busy channel lockout will lock me out from transmitting because that frequency is already busy so it will prevent me from talking over somebody that's already talking so for busy channel lockout i'm going to go to menu we're going to go to option number 23 bcl busy channel lock off hit menu again to select it use the up or down arrow key to select on and menu again and now it's saved now you notice i didn't get to confirm sas back from her she's not talking anymore because we told her to shut her up with that previous setting the next option is the alarm option as you know the uv-5r being the best engineered radio in the world according to ham radio operators worldwide it has an alarm call button so if you were to press and hold the call button it makes that wonderful little alarm noise by default if you do that it will transmit that alarm noise over the air so what most people will do is set it so that if you press and hold that button accidentally it's only going to sound through the speaker it will never transmit that stupid alarm noise that's menu option 32 so we're going to go into menu go up to number 32 or just type in 3 2 alarm mode right now it's set to tone and we're going to make sure that it's set to site so setting alarm mode to site will mean it you only hear it on the the site on the radio through the speaker and now for the most important feature that you want to be absolutely certain you turn on that is menu option number 39 and that is the roger beep the roger beep is that little sound you hear when you when you're transmitting and then you let go it makes a little beep you want to make sure you turn that on because the ham radio operators love to hear other people use that beep sound it lets the ham radio operators know that you're serious about using your baofang uv5r so to turn that on we go to menu with menu option 39 39 and i hit menu and just make sure that it's set to on it was already on make sure it's set to on now when i key up and transmit it makes that lovely little makes that lovely little professional serious roger beep now some hammer radio operators it's a small minority may complain that that roger beep is annoying when that happens you just let them know that this is your radio and you use it the way you want and you don't care what they think unless you want something or you want their help then you do what they say otherwise if they don't like it they can go listen to somebody else and that's it those are the most important features that you should at least be aware of on your baufang uv5r if you have any questions about any of those features other features anything that i've gone over here today leave a comment below stupid comments [ __ ] comments sad ham comments explaining radio theory or answering questions that nobody asked and nobody cares about generally annoying comments will be pinned to the top for everybody to laugh at so keep that in mind before you post a stupid comment there's no such thing as stupid questions if you have a question ask it i'll do my best to answer if i'm not able to answer it somebody else will try they will probably get it wrong so bear that in mind thank you for watching we hope to see you

Channel: NotaRubicon Productions

Views: 379,937

Keywords: Baofeng UV-5R How To, UV-5R menu options, how to change settings on UV-5R

Id: m-p5YJgw49Q

Length: 16min 8sec (968 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021