When I was new to Ham Radio I picked up a Baofeng UV-5R as my first radio. It came in yellow! Cool! Soon after I discovered Summits on the Air and tried to activate Cornell Mountain (W7O/WV-099) as my first summit. There are big TV and radio towers and Cornell and the Baofeng was completely swamped by that RF.
For my return to Cornell I wanted to bring the Baofeng along for a comparison. I completed the activation with my Yaesu FT-60r. Great signal reports and 11 contacts there. K7ATN stayed by his radio and did some tests while I operated on the Baofeng. I turned the squelch wide open and K7ATN did a low power transmission. Nothing heard. He cranked his radio up to 50W and did another TX. Nothing heard.
Many SOTA summits have towers on top. The Baofeng UV-5R has terrible out-of-band rejection on it's receiver. Usually it'll just get swamped.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to hate on Baofeng's here. I think they are a fine entry-level radio. For what I wanted to do with my ham license, I quickly outgrew it.
What radios should we test next up here? Should we put a bandpass filter on the Baofeng?
If you'd like to support this channel, head over to my sticker store! There you'll find Portable Radio, SOTA, and QRP themed stickers to show off your love of Portable Ops: [ Ссылка ]
Another way to support my channel! Buy Me A Coffee: [ Ссылка ]
