Monday, May 19, 2014

Baofeng UV-5R: Change Requests

Mike (W9MDB) is talking with the factory and asking for several changes on behalf of the user community. I always like to see how the manufacturers respond. I don't expect them to meet every demand, but when they do share the reasoning behind making the change or not, it helps me understand their technical abilities and business perspective better:
#1 Bug – The [Exit] key sends DTMF "0" instead of "D".
#2 Bug -- The mic jacks seem to be a very common problem.  The contacts will stay open preventing the internal mic from working.  Apparently due to some material around the jacks which melts in heat and will clog up the contacts.
#3 New -- Need to the ability to disable the VFO/MR button so the radio can be truly Part 90 compliant.
#4 New -- The ability to turn off the lower display (2nd VFO) completely -- and the A/B switch – for simple Part 90 operation scenarios
#5 New -- Get the “real” firmware revision level – maybe using the “9” key during power on?
#6 Bug – When scanning MR channels that have R-CTCS tones there is not enough time allotted to allow them to lock on the lower frequency R-CTCS tones
.#7 New – Allow the alarm to be completely disabled 
#8 Bug – When SAVE is not OFF and ABR > 8, the broadcast FM radio will have a pulsing noise after returning from being interrupted by a received signal.
#9 Bug – The enable/disable VHF TX and UHF TX features do not work#10 New – MDF-AB – OFF,FREQ,NAME – OFF means the display is left alone, FREQ means selecting a channel with [A/B] will force the selected channel to display FREQ and the other channel to display NAME.  NAME forces the selected channel to NAME and the other channel to FREQ.

3 comments:

  1. I don't have a UV-5R, but if it's like the UV-B5, allow channels to be added to and removed from the scan list via the keyboard. Why does (almost) everyone get this wrong?

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  2. Maybe they fixed it with the BF-UV530i " Hypario®Exclusive" version now available??

    Rob in AZ

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  3. Just make the darn squelch work properly!
    It is so annoying that I want to use the radio as a wheel chock in the garage for the car.

    Adam in Aus.

    Great blog Brick! Thanks!

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