Finally picked up a radio

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After 7 years of having my technician's I finally pick up a radio. Nothing special my Baofeng BF-F9 v2+ which apparently is assembled by a 3rd party from parts of old Baofeng radios should be delivered today. I don't think I'll get real involved in this (I've been wrong before), I do want to familiarize myself with them and maybe get some other people in my area interested for emergency purpose. Any suggestions for an antenna upgrade?
 
The Nagoyas on eBay are cheap and work better than the stock antenna. Adding a rat tail makes a very big difference. Cut a piece of wire ( any gauge) 19.5" long, strip one end and secure under a belt clip screw. Having that dangling wire electrically "counter balance " the antenna can make a 10x difference.
 
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The Nagoyas on eBay are cheap and work better than the stock antenna. Adding a rat tail makes a very big difference. Cut a piece of wire ( any gauge) 19.5" long, strip one end and secure under a belt clip screw. Having that dangling wire electrically "counter balance " the antenna can make a 10x difference.

Would this setup work the same, or am I best to do it at the end?

tigertailb.jpg
 
The Nagoyas on eBay are cheap and work better than the stock antenna. Adding a rat tail makes a very big difference. Cut a piece of wire ( any gauge) 19.5" long, strip one end and secure under a belt clip screw. Having that dangling wire electrically "counter balance " the antenna can make a 10x difference.

I didn't find the rat tail to make any difference on my Baofeng. I eventually took it off.
 
I didn't find the rat tail to make any difference on my Baofeng. I eventually took it off.
The thing I miss with the UV-5R is it doesn't have a real S-meter. When I tested rat tails I used my FT-60 and I got anywhere from 2 to 4 S-units improvement. I went outside during a weekly net on a repeater that came in at S-5 without the rat tail and S-7 to 9 with it. I couldn't hear the improvement because S-5 was a reasonably strong signal. I think you'll only hear the improvement if you've got a really weak signal.
 
The thing I miss with the UV-5R is it doesn't have a real S-meter. When I tested rat tails I used my FT-60 and I got anywhere from 2 to 4 S-units improvement. I went outside during a weekly net on a repeater that came in at S-5 without the rat tail and S-7 to 9 with it. I couldn't hear the improvement because S-5 was a reasonably strong signal. I think you'll only hear the improvement if you've got a really weak signal.

A few of us tried it operating simplex and our range fell off at the same places with and without the rat tail. I do recall seeing test results (maybe yours) that looked promising, which is what prompted me to make a few, but I just found it to be in the way.

One thing I would have liked to try would be to put the tail right at the antenna connector. "Any ground point" might not be good enough when you're talking RF.

Replacing the antenna with a Nagoya made a very significant difference.
 
I have my radio and I'm lost. Nothing like having a CB back in the day..... lots of reading ahead of me.
I don't know how you are with clubs, but the Blackstone Valley ARC is very active. They have a weekly "beginners" night in Lincoln which I've heard good things about from guys who have gone. I'm sure they could help you get your radio programmed.

BVARC Consortium

If you're still stuck, PM me and maybe I can help you via IM or a phone call.
 
Well, one week later and I'm understanding this a bit more. I still don't know how to program my radio manually for repeaters, but I have it programed via CHIRP. I couldn't get it to run on my Mac so I installed it on my old Win machine. After dicking around for 5 days, I finally got it to run on my Mac.
 
Well, one week later and I'm understanding this a bit more. I still don't know how to program my radio manually for repeaters, but I have it programed via CHIRP. I couldn't get it to run on my Mac so I installed it on my old Win machine. After dicking around for 5 days, I finally got it to run on my Mac.

Programming it manually is literally the definition of insanity. You follow the directions exactly: it doesn't work. You follow the directions exactly again: it doesn't work. Yadda yadda yadda. You follow the directions exactly again: it works.

I don't know if this works, but it's a nice flowchart of how freaking complicated it is to program a standard repeater.

http://www.miklor.com/uv5r/pdf/uv5r_ProgStd.pdf

I haven't run Chirp on my Mac, what's so hard and what's the trick? I bought the cable when I bought the radio, but then my buddy programmed a bunch of ours to have the same freqs.
 
Programming it manually is literally the definition of insanity. You follow the directions exactly: it doesn't work. You follow the directions exactly again: it doesn't work. Yadda yadda yadda. You follow the directions exactly again: it works.

I don't know if this works, but it's a nice flowchart of how freaking complicated it is to program a standard repeater.

http://www.miklor.com/uv5r/pdf/uv5r_ProgStd.pdf

I haven't run Chirp on my Mac, what's so hard and what's the trick? I bought the cable when I bought the radio, but then my buddy programmed a bunch of ours to have the same freqs.

I love my Mac's but forcing it to do certain things is a huge pain. I tried everything I could find on the net. I'm not sure if it was once specific thing or a combination of things but this is what seems to have worked for me.

http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=229&pcid=41
 
I assumed you downloaded the mac specific version of CHIP? I am currently trying to program my UV-5R. for the 70cm band the offset is 5mHz so I assume I just put the offset as 5.0000 since chirp is in mHz ? .6 is kHz correct?
 
I assumed you downloaded the mac specific version of CHIP? I am currently trying to program my UV-5R. for the 70cm band the offset is 5mHz so I assume I just put the offset as 5.0000 since chirp is in mHz ? .6 is kHz correct?

Yes, I downloaded the Mac version. I queried the data source from repeatersource and uploaded what I wanted. It does all the math/settings for you.
 
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