1 Ham radio doesn't give a crap what you do that's not on ham frequencies much less will track you down on other frequencies.

2 Ham frequencies make up a very small part of radio frequencies even on the ones you can get on your Baofeng. Why everyone that buys a Baofeng thinks they thinks they have to get on ham frequencies I have no idea.

3 Ham is required to police their frequencies and they've seen what happened to CB. No one in ham radio wants to give the government an excuse to take the frequencies and sell them.

4 Your Baofeng probably won't do what 90% of you seem to think they will. In trees or in town you'll be lucky to get a mile to a mile and a half without a repeater.

Ok Mr FCC man.

How many people have you reported to the FCC OP?

Gun owners are required to police other gun owners. They’ve seen what happened to the machine gun, suppressors and bump stocks.

#turnthemin

OP speaks the truth.

Face it, y'all have been been suckered by the ChiComs.

Speak for yourself. I talk to people on the moon with my Baofeng.

Thats why i bought yaesu.

:ham users: REEEEEEEEEEEEE

Haha, I've been using mine FRS frequencies! Screw the haters.

I don’t talk on mine. I only key the mic when I’m rubbing one out to Q threads.

I have one of them Baofeng thingies.

I have never made a contact with it.

I haven't even been able to hit a repeater.

That was one of my points. Frs, gmrs, murs, go for it. Pretty much no one cares and no one outside a mile or mile and a half will hear you even if they did care.

how’s your hemorrhoids?

Ham is more like driving than gun ownership.

Imagine a highway where everyone was on their honor. If there is no self policing the highway becomes useless to everyone.

I found a secret Nazi base in Antarctica!  Zey haff very goot comms, ya.

You would know if you were listening to the local repeater freq!

I bought one. I listen to weather and local police and fire etc... and it was all I expected. Now if only I understood how the blasted memory channels work so I don't have to keep typing out the frequencies. I have googled it and still cannot idiot proof it. The cable and chirp and even tuning the squelch was easy but that blasted memory function lol.

Dad's local ham club owned a repeater.

They were the Farout Amateur Radio Transmitters.

Name of their repeater was obviously F.A.R.T.

Baofangs are the Lorcins of Ham radios.

There is a good YouTube video. It still takes sitting there with the radio in hand and doing it a few times. Fuggin things are too complicated.

Got a link or a way to search this?

Yep.

Ghetto goblin,  with the will to use it, can kill you just as dead with a Lorcin as an STI Staccato.

They do exactly what I thought they'd do.  They're easy to program into a GMRS/FRS and MURS unit that can also listen into other local frequencies or transmit on them in an emergency.  That's all I wanted them for and they do it well.

Search uv5h or whatever that model is. It is the one where the guy is holding it and going over it with another person who is asking questions.

It worked pretty well as a teaching format for me.

If you're using a Baofeng, then get the factory programming cable and download the Chirp software. You can program it in the Chirp desktop software then upload to the radio.

lol - Reminds me of a not funny story from a leo about a 32 lorcin. I have no idea how to find it but you are correct.

I did that and it works fine but I am literally an idiot and do not know how to pull it back up. It just inputs a number like say I hit memory channel 1, I tried holding it down like a car stereo but that does not work. I am an IT guy and work on computers so now I see how the other side feels lol. btw, I have the UV-5R.

bullshit

I like it. I might have to take a cue from Hi Point and hydro dip my Baofeng with the hunna dolla bills!

I've got a BF-F8HP. Mine has up & down arrows to manually scroll thru the stored channels. If I hold the star (*) key for 2 seconds it will scan.

I'm a software engineer and it's definitely a learning curve. I'm sure all the HAMs here are laughing at the blind leading the blind.

Is that why whenever a new Baofeng owner shows up, invariably, a ham will point out that he can't legally do anything but listen with his radio?

Sometimes it's better to type a frequency...

It takes a PL code to open the repeater, you need to know what it is.  You have to set
your radio with it and an offset of 600 kilohertz.  

https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/HAM-BaoFeng-radios-for-dummies/5-2409555/

I talk to women from Venus...

I talk to worms on Uranus.

Legally that's true. Practically, no one cares if you stay off ham, public service and business's frequencies.

The issue is that Baofengs are not "type accepted" for HAM frequencies.

That disallows them for legal use for the HAM frequencies.

Will they work?  Yes. Is the RF frequency output on the Baofengs "clean"? Most likely not so much.

Am I licensed? Yes, I hold an Amateur Extra license (from back in the day when Morse Code was required).

I also hold a GMRS license.

I own two Baofengs.


Think Colt Python as a "type accepted".

vs

German Röhm Gesellschaft revolvers.

They both work, but the Python is build to precision specifications.

It's not an issue for me.  *shrug*

Hams don't have to use type accepted radios. Hams are the only ones that can legally use Baofengs.

Well we’re failing miserably than, you can’t get on social media and not see modern sporting pistols being flaunted, or go somewhere in the woods target shooting and seeing garbage left lying around.

Have we set the frequencies and CTCSS to the regional LEO repeater yet?  

This, i bought an antenna and have nightly conversations with my new alien homies from alpha centauri.

I made the mistake of trusting people who said "Buy a Baofeng!" for comms.

I was... disappointed.

That said, my Baofeng is able, in the mountains of VA, to reach to a local radio guy on the FRS channels.  Linear distance, I think it's something like 3 miles.  So he is able to talk to Europe on his gear, and I can talk to him.  Not bad for a $30 investment.

And I got them at something like $25 a piece.
I don't get what I'm supposed to be ashamed/disappointed about.

No shit?

I don't have two of those soon to be banned radios.

Because I am not a domestic terrorist.

Truth is, hams have enough problems with licensed assholes without importing more illiterate (in the radio sense) ones.
Although, I have to admit that a lot of the unlicensed ones have better "radio etiquette" and are more trustworthy ...)

If you want an example, take FT8, which is a digital mode originally designed for really low-signal work - such as receiving signals bounced off the moon, off meteor trails etc.
It was then used to communicate on paths that just don't work currently because of the poor conditions (lack of sunspots) - with a low power transmitter, and good antenna it is possible to use if under almost all conditions for trans-continental and inter-continental contact.

It doesn't do much. You can't exchange messages, it is pre-configured to exchange call sign and received signal strength. That is the minimum required to validate a "contact" in the ham world.

I tried it out with a 5W radio, and from Oregon worked the East coast, Canada, Alaska, Asiatic Russia, Japan, Korea, Australia, Brazil, Cuba, West Indies.

That was before it became "popular". Now you have assholes using this low power mode running 1kW or more. Yes, they get all the traffic, because no-one can hear anything else.

This is just one example.

Assholes are everywhere. Doesn't matter if they use a $50 Chinese radio or a $20K state of the art ham setup.

If you call on ham frequencies, know how to use your radio, know the procedures to not clobber anyone else, even if you didn't have a real callsign I would talk to you ... but unfortunately, the FCC would yank my license for doing so.

If I were ruler of the world, I would change how ham licensing works. 90% of hams buy commercial black boxes and just use them. Out of the box they are really not much better than a type accepted FRS etc. radio - won't transmit outside the ham bands, all preset. If it breaks they send it back for repair.

I can see a black-box operator license. For those guys. All it would entail is learning the regulations and operating procedures. Very little tech - probably about the level of the current tech license.

For those that wanted to build their own kit, use amplifiers, repair their own kit etc, then something like the current Extra license would qualify them.

I don't think the US could arbitrarily do that, it would take international agreement, so probably not going to happen in my lifetime. But it shoukd.