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Amateur Radio

Baofeng’s desense when using external antenna is not true for everyone.

Modulation with DV1XKG and DV1YWJ both North Caloocan station to Las Piñas on Cignus UV85 a Baofeng UV5R variant for Philippine market. The portable radios internal squelch level was adjusted using Chirp. The modulation fix was applied using hardware modification by disabling the VOX function and use it as preamp for microphone instead.

The complimentary video by DV1XKG from his side, I’m still using the Baofeng with modify squelch level and hardware modulation fix. Notice that even on 1 watt my transmission can still be copied on his side with a quality audio which is not possible with Baofeng default microphone without hardware modification.




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8 replies on “Baofeng’s desense when using external antenna is not true for everyone.”

What Aerial Antenna did you used from this video?

I am also having a hard time using my Cignus and Baofeng with my Dualband mobile antenna.

Hi Dennis, on the testing video it’s on Ringo Ranger, works better in directional antenna, but yes the radio is susceptible to noise if you’re in the city. On provincial landscape TX/RX works flawlessly even better than YAESU 2900 on my testing :).

I have a similar issue with my Baofengs, the sensetivity seems to be off, even with the adjusted squelch done by CHIRP, should I just use a ringo antenna as the thread says here ?

NO, the issue with the Baofeng’s is the design of the front end not much filtering, so it’s prone to desense (Desense is the degradation in sensitivity due to noise sources,in RF rich environment) i.e city which has many cell sites, mobile phones, wifi etc. all those are RF sources, which overload the Baofeng’s receiver thereby affecting the sensitivity. If you would take the same radio in the province, then the radio would perform well even if you are using just any kind of antenna be it omni or directional. The video, I have on youtube is a special case – because it works well on any antenna, but most of the complaints from Baofeng’s users is the desense which I found to be true on my other Baofeng radios. It’s is better for you to use directional antenna if you are in the city (it will improve the reception, but not much), if you’re in the province any antenna will work just fine.

My unit is a special case of a baofeng uv5r that is performing well on external antenna, the other units that I have come across have desense issues as well so it’s better for you to use a directional antenna rather than a ringo ranger.

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