I Bought a Baofeng DMR Radio

Well, I've gone digital. After hearing quite a few tractor sounding signals on my analogue scanners, and knowing that they were most probably digital signals, curiosity got the better of me and I bought a digital scanner. Only to listen, not to transmit. I did a fair bit of research before hand, and it was clear that the Baofeng DM 1701 was one of the top cheap choices for getting into DMR radio. I wanted one with OpenGD77 software already installed, and that's exactly what I got. Reading on some of the forums, most said there is a huge learning curve to learning how DMR radios work in comparison to using an analogue scanner. 

But I have found it fairly easy to do the basics like program channels, scan frequencies etc. I think that most people who are well-versed with analogue scanners will pick up the basic operations of a DMR radio quite easily.

So, what's the Baofeng 1701 like?

All in all its good. I like the fact that its digital and analogue. So even though I bought it for digital, it's nice to be able to switch to analogue and see what's going on there as well. Channels can also be saved as both digital and analogue and all scanned together, which is quite a good feature. What surprised me about digital is how there is no squelch noise. It seems strange. I turn the radio on and it is silent. The two knobs at the top are volume and a scroller / selector wheel, no squelch. The squelch is digitally programmed in percentages.

And only when a signal is picked up and someone talks do I truly know how loud the radio is turned up. I much prefer the old analogue manual audible squelch to be honest. Another surprise was how almost any antenna works really well at picking up digital signals. There is no special digital antenna, all my "analogue" ones work really well with DMR. Pretty much anything will do. And the reception of digital is really clear. It's not like analogue where you can pick up a weak signal that has a lot of hissing but make out what was said. With digital it seems like you either hear it and it comes through clear, or you don't hear it at all.

Video: Some potential shoplifters keeping security on their toes

Sometimes it can be hard to make out what is being said with digital because some people seem to speak really fast, mumble or have accents, and it can be quite hard in comparison to analogue to understand what was said. You have to listen carefully. And the volume levels can be so different. Like, one person will talk and it seems clear and at a nice volume level, then the other side will reply and almost blow the speaker up! So it can be a bit of a constant mess around with the volume knob when a signal is received to keep everything well balanced.

And speaking about the volume knob, it's not good if you have no headphones and want to listen quietly because other people are trying to sleep in your home. The volume does not go down gradually once it reaches a low point. It just cuts off. The lowest volume before it cuts off at its lowest level is not that low at all. Compared to the Quansheng UV -K5 / K6, 5R+ or any other normal analogue scanner, which volume levels all go down extremely low before they cut off completely. Almost fade out. The Baofeng 1701's volume knob does not have this level of gradual precision fade-out at the lower end.

Still though, the radio has been a lot of fun so far. And I would say digital signals seem more interesting right now than analogue. Maybe it's still a bit of a novelty for me at the moment. I'm hearing loads that can't be heard on an analogue scanner, as many things have gone digital. I hear mostly shop security guards, traffic wardens, property watch guards, shopwatch, workplaces, delivery companies, hotels, construction workers and some things I'm yet to identify. Not sure what they are. 

Also, I never knew I'd be able to listen in to other peoples hotspot setups. I can hear people, who are at work doing some sort of security / tow truck type jobs that are using a hotspot, and they are all over the country, connected to each other. Because the hotspots are using the Internet, I can hear their work chatter from all over the UK. The same goes for some of the digital HAM frequencies I've been picking up. I can hear people from all over the country.

Battery Life

Battery life is OK. But it does not stay at one hundred percent for very long. Some radios, such as my Quansheng's, when fully charged they can stay at one hundred percent for a long time before they start to discharge. But the Baofeng, while still decent, is discharging quite quickly from one hundred percent. Don't get me wrong, it does sit at certain points for a considerable time, like 99%, 94% and 88%. But in an unfair comparison, the Quansheng battery life is better. Still, though, the Baofeng battery can and does last the week, or a bit longer if used sporadically a few times each day. So its not too bad.

OpenGD77 Firmware

A bit of a love hate relationship. While it is excellent for making things like saving channels, scanning frequencies easy, there does appear to be a lot that's been left out of the software. And if you do not have a cable and CPS software, there are some basic options that you would have thought would be a no-brainer to include that have been left out and can only be edited / saved with the cable and CPS software. 

Things like deleting saved channels, changing the background / text colours, and even adding new zones. All these things and more can only be achieved by having the cable and CPS software. Basically, the radio must be connected to a computer to changed these things permanently. So, if you are going to buy this radio, be sure to buy the cable with it also, as it will be required at some point.

The Baofeng 1701 with OpenGD77 already installed is certainly not perfect, but I'm glad I bought it. For what I need, which is finding new digital frequencies, saving and scanning them its a great radio. I use the Quansheng to hunt down what sounds like digital signals, then enter them into the Baofeng. Sometimes they still can't be heard. Maybe they are encrypted or transmitting in a protocol standard that the radio can not decode.

These types of signals will still register with the radio and the top light even goes green like its receiving a normal, hearable signal. But nothing will be heard. The radio isn't faulty, it's more than likely just an incompatible signal for DMR mode.

However, most of the time I can successfully use the analogue radio to hunt down the signal and listen to what is being said on the Baofeng. It's quite cool and makes a nice change to buying yet another analogue radio. I've got loads of those!

I'm no expert with DMR, but If there's anything you'd like to know about this radio, leave a comment and I'll try my best to answer. 

The Quansheng TK11 First Impressions Video

Yes, it's now released and for sale. People have been waiting for this radio to drop for quite some time. For a while it seemed like it would never happen, but the day has finally arrived. I hope it lives up to expectations. It's got lots of cool features and the built quality looks great. So, what advantages does it have over a modified firmware Quansheng. Well, from what I can quickly see. It can go lower than an Egzumer'd Quansheng. Which goes to 18MHz. The TK11 goes down to 0.153. I presume that's KHz and not MHz. Transmit power is up to "10 Watts". Out the box the Quansheng TK11 can transmit on CB. Two antenna connections. The second one is a T-Shape, which deals with all the lower bands like short wave.

The Quansheng TK11 can be found for sale here

 
Battery is 3000mAh or 2500mAh depending on where you look. The TK 11 goes all the way up to 1160MHz. Apparently it is waterproof. And I'm sure there will be some reviewers putting that to the test. I can wait to see those results. All in all the Quansheng TK11 [is it the "8" or "5"] looks promising. I'm not sure what chip is inside this thing, but hopefully, once the mod developers take a look under the hood, they might be able to turn it into some sort of super radio. Out the box it is rather impressive anyway. No need to modify it for most people. But the temptation is always there if some mods do become available.

Quansheng Squelch Sensitivity CHIRP

I made a post a while back about the Quansheng and its lowest squelch setting being a bit too high. You can read that post here. The high squelch even on a low squelch setting of 1 led to choppy signals coming through, despite them being quite good signals. Anyway, this led me to look for an answer. Could it be the Egzumer firmware causing this issue. Did the developers make the lowest squelch a bit too high and possibly update this issue in the future with an Egzumer update.

The squelch settings from my Quansheng in CHIRP

Well it turns out that CHIRP has the ability to change the squelch settings on the K5-8 / UVK6, and also UV-5R Plus [here]. So I installed CHIRP, got my Quansheng details uploaded and had a look at the settings. I could see the squelch values and was tempted to change them. But I wasn't sure what numbers to put in and was scared of putting the wrong values in and bricking the radio. So I left it and did a bit of reading on the Internet.

I found out from reading on GitHub that the squelch values are on the EPROM [deep in the core settings I believe] and will only accept certain values. If the wrong values are added and then uploaded back to the radio using CHIRP, I think it can really mess things up. I don't know what the correct values are so I left it.

I didn't think it was worth potentially breaking the radio just for the occasional choppy signal. I can just disable the squelch completely when its choppy. I would probably leave it alone if I were you. But If you do decide to go through with this in CHIRP, I would appreciate a comment here to let me know how you got on. And, if it went well, what are the correct values.

Realistic Pro-26 Common Problem

The buzzing / failed speaker [see a video of the audio problem here] that I experienced with my old Realistic Pro-26 scanner must be more common a problem than I initially thought. Since I sold mine on eBay for spares or repairs I have come across another 3 with what looked to be the exact same issue. I even contacted one of the sellers and asked him to explain the problem at bit more. I asked him, when he plugged in earphones does it sound OK, or is the buzzing noise still there. He said it was still there.

This was exactly the same with mine, and I think this means that something on the motherboard inside has failed and will need replacing. So if you haven't got experience with radio electronics / soldering / fault finding etc I would say don't be tempted to buy one of these radios that has this fault just because it is being sold cheap. If you need to send it somewhere for repair it may end up costing you a fair bit of money to get fixed. You may as well buy a fully working Realistic Pro-26 for more money to begin with.

Many old scanners suffer from common problems over time. Things fail. It reminds me a bit of the AOR AR8000. It's an old but still quite capable receiver that can be prone to keypad issues, where the keypad starts to fail and buttons stop working. The good thing about this problem is that it is repairable some of the time, and it's quite easy to do it yourself. All that's needed is a membrane pad repair kit. But these can sometimes be quite expensive, so look around as some can be found cheap if searching for something similar. Like "remote membrane control repair kit" or "Electronics Cleaning Repair Kits" etc.

I suppose it should be expected for thing to fail on old scanners. I mean, the two mentioned here are over 3 decades old. And as great as they are, things do break after many years of use. I wonder if any of the modern radio equipment would last as long. I'd also be interesting in hearing what others have to say about their scanners in terms of reliability. What's the most reliable scanner you have ever owned? And is it still in use today.

Egzumer Needs a Squelch Lower Than One

Egzumer is great software for using to modify the Quansheng radios. It has many excellent features and is very easy to use. But one thing I have noticed that does annoy me a bit is the lowest squelch level. It reads number 1. But for this to be the lowest squelch setting, I think it is set a little too high. Some signals, which are not too bad in terms of how clear / strong they are, are choppy on the lowest squelch setting.

Disabling the squelch does get rid of the choppiness but then the squelch is making a heap of noise each time the transmission ends. This can not be stopped by pressing the M [menu button], or the middle side button if the squelch is set to off [zero]. So It would be great if there was a lower squelch setting of 0.5 so that all the faint signals could be heard without being choppy, or without having to disable the squelch completely [which is a squelch of 0 = disabled].

Other than that Egzumer is excellent. I have seen some people say that the Quansheng K5 / K6 etc are not really scanners. But they are. With Egzumer installed you get 200 channels to add frequencies to. These are scannable, so its basically a 200 channel scanner with tons of features. And the scanning works great. Each channel is totally customizable. You can change steps, mode [AM, NFM etc], Demodu and much more. A lot of the older scanners can not do this for individual channels, so yeah, it's really good. 

Update. I have since come to find out after a bit of research that the squelch can be edited lower in CHIRP. I don't use CHIRP but might have a look at it now to see if I can lower the squelch. Would be excellent if it actually works. Will update with a post if I do it and it works.

Inside My Home Base Scanner

Here is the inside of my old Home made airband scanner receiver. Circuit board: It has an airband chip inside called: R&EW 720 CH AIRBAND RX. l've wrote about this receiver before [at the link] so not going to talk about it much here. Just thought I would show some pictures of the inner workings in case you wanted to have a look! I'll talk to you soon. I'm going to be posting about some Quansheng / Antenna related stuff.

Home Made Airband Receiver Radio

Check out this old school home made airband receiver that I got from Scotland around 1 + years back. Has some issues but will make an excellent restoration project. I've got too many things going on myself to try and fix it so decided to sell it on eBay as spares or repairs. It wasn't up for sale for very long. Someone who loves home made stuff snapped it up really quickly.

It does have an issue where the read out from the dials at the front does not match the frequency. Its all topsy turvy. So I think its only really the front frequency dial mechanism that is faulty. Although I can not be completely sure.

Whilst it is faulty, it does actually work. It could pick up 1 air band transmission and a distant mainstream radio station. Not sure which one. That's all I could get it to pick up. Check out the video of it picking up Birmingham Airport [136.025MHz].

 

It comes with an antenna that I have posted about before on this blog. It's a piece of wire with an angled BNC connection. Old school cool. Works really well. I've tested it against normal antennas and it is just as good as them. And in some cases, better!