Monday, June 20, 2011

Baofeng UV-3R: KC2RA Review

A KC2RA (Kings County Repeater Association) review by Gary ( KB2BSL) of the Baofeng UV-3R is below. I had not thought about it, but the review points out how much the of radio is in the software - that it uses the software to leverage a small number of components to build such an interesting little radio.

First Look: Baofeng UV-3R Review
"This radio is undoubtedly a SDR (Software Defined Radio) and has a relatively low part count. I will not cover every part used as a full list is available in the UV-3R Yahoo group file section (Thanks to PY2BBS), but will cover some of the major ones."
"The heart of the radio is a RDA Microelectronics RDA1846 single chip transceiver for walkie talkies. This single CMOS chip provides frequency synthesizer, VCO/VFO, AFC, AGC, pre/de-emphasis (selectable and can be disabled), RSSI indicator, CTCSS/DCS encode/decode, DTMF, 8dBm PA (about 6mw), and more. Basically everything a radio needs is provided by a single chip."

6 comments:

  1. Brick,

    Do you know how does the UV-3R compare with the Wouxun units Ed sells?

    Thanks
    Paul

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  2. From a non-technical perspective, I would first say that the Wouxun pioneered the way for other Chinese radios. I think we would all be a lot more wary of a $50 rig if the Wouxun hadn't been so solid.

    I don't know enough to give you a deep technical comparison, but here are my comments.
    1. Wouxun is 5W vs the 2W of the Baofeng.
    2. Wouxun has quickly developed a reputation for building a good radio.
    3. Wouxun has US dealers, like Ed, that are actively providing support to the community and will provide warranty support without having to ship the radio back to China - which isn't the case with the UV-3R at the moment.
    4. Wouxun has gone through a couple of changes/improvements to its models. I hope to see the same with the UV-3R. We saw the move from 12 to 18 menu options. There are some filtering and volume gain "opportunities" in the UV-3R that need to be fixed.
    5. The Wouxun is a little more rugged in my opinion.
    6. The software is more robust for the Wouxun and should only get better with the development of the KG-UV Commander by a third party.

    They both have their place, but for me the UV-3R is more of a toy/BUR (back up radio). The Wouxun fits in nicely with the typical HT from big names like ICOM and Yaesu.

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  3. Thanks. What we need now is a DSP/SDR based 5W Wouxun ...

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  4. I'm still curious to see if the KG-UV920R mobile will ever come out.

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  5. Interesting review by Dave:
    http://n9ewo.angelfire.com/vx3r.html

    Reports bugs/problems programming the UV-3R.

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  6. Thanks for the link - lots of new to me information.

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