BAOFENG UV-5R Ⅲ Tri-Band

[Ray Albers]

Wow, what a great bunch of hams we have in this group!  

I bought one of these UV-5RIIIs even though I already have a whole bunch of  handhelds, because I thought it'd be good to have 220MHz capability (not to mention, the price appealed to my cheapskate nature!)  Well, I couldn't get it programmed with Chirp (for one thing it would not accept entry of 220MHz frequencies) so I posted a "help" message here.

I got a huge number of responses very quickly, with lots of suggestions.  Many of you evidently clicked on "Reply" rather than "Reply to All," so most of the messages only came to me and the rest of the group didn't know about them, with the result that there were quite a few duplicates.

Tom Benson, W4OO was the first to weigh in with the info that I needed to select Radioddity in CHIRP, rather than Baofeng, as the manufacturer, and then select UV5Rx3 as the radio. So now everything is working!

Cool!  I got my General Class ticket in 1954  (Extra in 1970) and in all those years I've never once transmitted in the 220 band.  Just now I used the handheld and accessed the  224.300 repeater and talked to a ham in Oklahoma so it's a new milestone for me! (I did get a report of low audio, as has been mentioned by others - guess I'll have to remember to speak up.)

Thanks again for all the helpful comments and 73 to all.

Ray K2HYD

[Norm Dallura]

When you PTT on 224.300 do you get a green light back when you PTT?  I have entered the published frequency, offset,  direction (-1.6) and the T/R-CTTS programmed, but no repeater response on two repeaters.  Obviously user error.

Norm

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[Ray Albers]

Norm,

Sorry you're having problems. Yes, when I PTT I get a response from the repeater, and in fact have had QSOs this afternoon. For what it's worth, here is a list of the settings I have in CHIRP:

Frequency   224.300

Name       (blank - you could type in a name, e.g., KG4HOT if you wish: optional)

Tone Mode    Tone

Tone   131.8

Tone Sq   (doesn't matter - mine is still set on default 88.5)

Cross Mode    Tone -> Tone

DTCS    23  (don't think it matters)

RX DTCS  23   ditto

DTCS Pol   NN

Duplex    -

Offset  1.6000 

Mode FM

Skip   (blank)

Power    High

hope some of this will help.

73

Ray K2HYD

[Norm Dallura]

Thanks so much to Ray and Tom.  You two pointed me in the right direction. It turns out that the frequency and tone listed on repeaterbook.com is correct, but the frequency and tone on the reperaterbook app is different and incorrect.  As you may have guessed, I was using the app frequencies, which were wrong.  Once I had the correct frequency and tones, things just worked.

Norm

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[Mark Whitis]

There are some misconceptions about how to use chirp.

Do not program your individual radio memories in chirp in the particular way Ray Albers suggests; it is not completely wrong but it isn't a good way as current versions of  the program will fight you in the normal entry mode if you try to enter all the values he suggested because they suggest incompatible operating modes and can't actually be stored in the radio as written.  That isn't the way that recent versions of the program were meant to be used, it adds many unnecessary steps,  (if you use spreadsheet entry with hide unused fields) some of the fields don't want to accept your values until you set other fields out of order, entering some of the values breaks values you already entered, and once you upload it to the radio and download it again, it will bear very little resemblance to what you put in.  He appears to be trying too hard to make the program work like it used to work.  And by trying to work around one little bit of perversity, he opened the door to even more perversity.  Or he is right clicking and choosing properties instead of entering data on the spreadsheet itself or unchecking the "hide unused fields" under view; those will let you enter data the old way but some of it won't stick.  Or his is just using an old version of the software (odd considering you need a fairly new version to support the triband radio).  The "cross" value in the tone mode field and the "cross mode" field weren't intended to be used at all on 99% of repeaters.

Here is what your screen should look like (if you are blind and can't read the screenshot, similar field settings are written out at the bottom of this message).   With rare exceptions, the Cross Mode and all the DTCS columns are blank and tone mode is never "cross" and only one of the Tone or ToneSql fields has a displayed value at any particular time.  If you have a Tone Mode value of "TSQL", then the tone in the ToneSql will actually be used to set both the transmit and receive tone.  You will notice that if you change the tone mode between "TONE" and "TSQL", that the "131.8" will automatically move back and forth between the "Tone" and "ToneSql" columns.   You can't set the Tone or ToneSql columns (or the DTCS Code or DTCS RX code ) to OFF like you can on the actual radio.; instead you have to dork with ToneMode column (and in rare cases cross mode).   The spreadsheet hides values that aren't relevent.

  Note that line 24, "000CVL", is a separator between valley settings and my old Charlottesville settings, some of which are still used.

Cross mode makes the program act weird..  If you set cross mode to "Tone -> Tone" you will change the Tone Mode to "Cross".   You can't then set "Tone -> Tone" back to nothing.  But you can change tone mode back to "TONE" or "TSQL" and that will undo cross mode.   Cross mode is only used in unusual circumstances:

• You want to use "split tone".    For example, we had a repeater that was having trouble that suggested it was hearing its own repeater output tone on the input.   So it was set to listen for one tone and put out another tone.   "Cross", "Tone -> Tone"
  
• You want to squelch the receiver if you don't get one tone but don't actually want to send a tone.  "Cross", "->Tone"
• Mixtures of CTCSS and DTCS
• Oddball DTCS modes where you use a different code on send and receive or only use the code on receive or transmit but not both.
  

 Otherwise, on chirp, you should set tone mode to TSQL or TONE and enter the value in either the Tone or ToneSql column but not both, even though a "131.8" in the "ToneSql" column implies a 131.8 in the Tone column.     Note that this is based on looking at what reading radios programmed before this insanity look like when using a post-insanity version of chirp.    If you program it the way Ray says to, after you download the file to the radio and read it back, it will not match what you put in.   Same if you write the data to an image file (not a chirp file).  It won't break anything but it will cause unnecessary confusion.   Note that this was tested on a dual band UV-5R+ radio, not a tri-bander.   "Cross mode" isn't even an actual setting in the radio; instead, it causes various CTCSS and DTCS values to be overwritten with OFF in various combinations.   You can change the various DTCS codes but if you select TSQL mode those will be overwritten with OFF when uploading to radio and will revert back to their default values when you download from the radio (or load a saved file) if you have them unhidden.

If it is a yeasu fusion repeater on an analog radio, use TSQL mode if you don't want to listen to the noise of all the digital transmissions.  But if you do, you need to press the monitor button every time before transmitting so you don't step on a digital user you can't hear.   That is a good idea in general.

If it is a frequency you can't legally transmit on (no license, weather, police/fire/rescue and you aren't affiliated, FRS,  GMRS, or MURS), set the duplex mode to "Off".   "(none)" means simplex, "Off" means transmitter off, and "split" means you want to enter a frequency that isn't set by the offset.  Note however, that split will be changed into "+" or "-" and whatever offset it takes to reach that frequency after you upload and download.  But it will be stored in the radio the same way as if you had manually entered an odd split; internally to the radio, all the memories are stored as splits so the program has to reconstruct the duplex and offset and it doesn't know whether you originally used split or duplex/offset because there is no bit for that in the radio memory.   Note that Off is actually a split to an invalid frequency.   I have used a split to zero for manual programming (you have to use the offset, it won't let you enter 000.000)  but chirp uses a very specific frequency, that I think matches that used by the factory software: 1666.66665MHz.

Chirp has to convert the abstract programming model you see on the screen to and from the memory representation stored in your radio.  Where there is more than one way to represent the same settings, you can typically only convert back to one of them.   Also, chirp does not know what some of the values stored in memory are for; it leaves those as it found them.    So you always start with the raw memory image you just downloaded from the radio or a memory image you know came from that exact radio at some time in the past.   Two radios with the same model number can have different firmware versions and different memory layouts.   In some cases, even the raw memory images from exactly identical models and firmware versions are incompatible.

The workflow in chirp is always:

• Before starting the chirp program, windows users should reinstall the correct USB to serial driver version to replace any newer version that windows has updated as these newer versions will not work with clone or counterfeit driver chips found in most cheap cables.
  
• download memory from your specific radio,  Radio -> Download from Radio
  
• save the "as found" data to disk, unless you are certain it is exactly the same as a version you already have stored on disk, File -> Save As
• import any memory data from one or more files or online "data sources".  These don't have to be the same model radio.  In the process, you can typically select which memory channels you do and don't want to import and renumber them to fit into the memory channel slots you desire.   The menu items you use to access each are:
  
• File -> Import
• Radio -> Import from data source
• Radio -> Query data source.  Opens a new tab (spreadsheet) which you can consult or copy and paste from
• Radio -> Import stock config
• copy and paste from other tabs
• if you want to import from a second radio, download from the radio and save to a file before beginning the current workflow
  
• make any manual edits, 
• Change any other settings, besides memory channels. 
  
• Initial  settings for various menu items.   Set the voice to english!  
  
• Your Name or Call sign in power on mesage 1.   You might not want to mess with 6+PowerOnMessage on Baofeng, that has some sort of factory timestamp/lot code or similar.
  
• upload to your radio, Radio -> upload to radio
  
• save a copy on disk, File -> Save As
• Export a copy in CSV format, if you like.   This will have only the channel memories and not the other settings.
  

While under certain circumstance you can deviate from that workflow, many deviations will make your radio work incorrectly or even break your radio.  On some radios you can permanently wipe out the radio specific factory calibration data by downloading even the memory image from an identical radio.   Then you have to send the radio back to the factory for an expensive realignment/recalibration.    The UV-5R doesn't have too much in the way of factory calibration settings, EXCEPT under settings -> service settings you have values for the VHF and UHF squelch value that might be specific to a particular radio.
I recommend when you first receive a new radio, you download and save the "as_received" memory image to disk, then perform a factory reset and download and save the "factory_reset" image to disk.    These saves need to be in raw memory image format.  These give you a place to start over, if you screw your radio up.

Consider including the following information in your filenames:

• The owner of the radio
• The model of the radio
• The firmware version of the radio, if you find yourself juggling multiple versions and trying to deviate from normal workflow
  
• The serial number or specific instance of the radio.   I" you have two UV-5R radios, number them.
• The date and timestamp in ISO-8601 format   20190102T2310  ( 2019_01_02_T_2310)
• which type of save was it?  As originally received, after factory reset, before programming, after programming,
  
• The file extension, ".img" if it is a raw memory image.
  

Attached is the UV-5R+ image file from which the screenshot was made.   As always, do not program this into your radio directly as it will likely not match the memory layout used by your particular firmware revision on your particular radio.    But after you have downloaded the memory image from your radio, you can import some or all of this data on top of it and then write that back to the radio.    Again, never upload a memory image file ("codeplug") to a radio that wasn't meant for that exact radio.  

If the repeaterbook app data isn't up to date, go to the google play store (or apple app store) and download the latest update.   The data updates are distributed as app updates instead of database updates.

For blind folks who can't read the screenshot, this is what a properly programmed TSQL setting looks like, written out:

    Frequency: 224.300

    Name: KG4HOT

    Tone mode: TSQL

    Tone: blank

    ToneSql: 131.8

    CrossMode: blank

    DTCS code: blank

    DTCS RX code: blank

    DTCS polarity: blank

   Duplex:    -

   Offset:  1.6000 

   Mode :FM

   Skip:  blank

   Power:    High

And a TONE only looks like:

     Frequency: 224.300

     Name: KG4HOT

     Tone mode: Tone

     Tone: 131.8

     ToneSql: blank

     CrossMode: blank

     DTCS code: blank

     DTCS RX code: blank

     DTCS polarity: blank

    Duplex    -

    Offset  1.6000 

    Mode FM

    Skip: blank

    Power:    High

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