Setting up and programming your UV-5R

*Update June 18, 2013* Comments are now closed, all conceivable questions have been answered (often more than once.)

So far, the Baofeng UV-5R seems to be a steal of a deal. Not without its flaws though, and one of them is the cryptic and incomplete manual.  This article will teach you how to set up the UV-5R, and how to program frequencies into the memory by hand. These instructions are a small part of the “UV-5R Manual For Dummies“, which is being created as we speak and will be posted on this blog later.

Setting up the UV-5R

1. Charge the battery. According to the manual this will take about 5 hours, but don’t be surprised when the LED switches to green after just a few hours – contrary to what the manual says, some batteries appear to be (partly) charged.

2. Please be aware that a Li-Ion battery will be at full strength only after you depleted and charged it at least three times in a row. After these three cycles you can charge the battery any time you want. There’s no memory effect to deal with.

3. Reset the UV-5R. This will make your life much easier when you want to program frequencies into the memory. Switch on the UV-5R, press the Menu button, type ‘40‘, and press the Menu button again. The display will show “Reset All”. Press Menu again. The display will show “Source?” Press the Menu button once more to confirm your choice. Do this quickly, you have only once second or so. All that weird factory memory data is deleted now, and defaults are restored.

4. In later firmware versions a Chinese voice was added and, unfortunately, is default after a reset. You can change the language back to English in Menu 14.

How the menu system works

Pressing the Menu button the first time will display the menu items. There are 40 items in total. Pressing the Up or Down button scrolls through all the items. If you know where to go, typing the item number on the keypad will often be faster.

Press the Menu button once more to switch to the parameter menu. Pressing the Up and Down buttons allows you to browse through all the options. After selecting one of the options, press the Menu button again to confirm and save your choice. You can exit the menu at any time by pressing the Exit button. Waiting a few seconds will do the trick, too.

Set the channel spacing

Select Menu 1 (Step, channel spacing)
Options: 2.5KHz, 5KHz, 6.25KHz, 10KHz, 12.5KHz, 25KHz.
Default: 2.5KHz
What channel spacing you need differs from country to country. Check your band plans. In Europe for example, 12.5KHz would be fine on VHF, and 6.25KHz on UHF would make it possible to use the UV-5R on PMR channels (the EU equivalent of FRS).

Note: You have to program the channel spacing twice: once for VHF, once for UHF. Press the Band key to switch from VHF to UHF and back.

Programming Example 1: storing simplex frequencies

1. Switch to VFO A
2. Select VHF or UHF by using the Band key
3. Select the frequency you want to store
4. Press Menu, type ‘27‘, and press Menu again
5. Select an empty memory position (000 – 127) by using the Up or Down key
6. Press Menu again to store the frequency
7. Press the Exit key to leave the menu.

Programming example 2: storing repeater frequencies

1. Switch to VFO A
2. Select VHF or UHF by using the Band key
3. Select the receive frequency you want to store
4. Press Menu, type ‘27‘, and press Menu again
5. Select an empty memory position (000 – 127) by using the Up or Down key
6. Press Menu to store the receive frequency
7. Press the Exit key
8. Select the transmit frequency
9. Press Menu, type ‘27‘, and press Menu again
10. Press Menu once more.

Switch to memory mode by pressing the VFO/M key and test your work. These simple examples do not cover possible sub audio requirements.