Help & Advice

Hi Allan,

I'll help if I can.

First off - 2m is very quiet at the moment, so not hearing anything is not a surprise. Also, if you're only using the basic rubber duck antenna, you're not going to get much - an outdoor / rooftop antenna will give better results.

Remind me where you live. If you're within a 5 mile radius of Leigh-on-Sea, I'm happy to try a test message at a time that suits, and see if you can hear anything. Otherwise, it's worth having a listen tomorrow (Monday Night) to the net on GB3DA. The frequency to listen to is 145.725, but if you are not close to Danbury, you won't hear anything with the built-in aerial. If that's the case, listen to 145.125MHz, where you should be able to hear people close to you - so just one side of the conversation.

Otherwise, if you're local and fancy a meet-up for me to check the programming for you, drop me an email via "Contact" at the top of the page, and we can see what we can sort out. I'm around on-and-off over the next week.

Pete

If the radio is OK when it's been looked at I'd recommend upgrading the stock antenna for perhaps a Nagoya NA-771. A bit long but gives better range I've personally found. Given the good height of my QTH I have hit a repeater 38 miles away with 5 watts on the UV-5R, just a thought.

Bri (2E0WHB)

Just another thought, Perhaps the squelch (Memory 0) has been set way to high. Mine has had the PZT treatment and my squelch is set at 2
I should have said in my last post to this thread that the 38 mile repeater QSO was with the aftermarket antenna fitted.

Best of luck with the radio.
Bri

Hi Allan,

Just put together a short guide that may help you (and others). See if the following helps at all: https://www.essexham.co.uk/handheld

Pete

Hi Allan,

Your replacement radio probably came with the squelch set far too high as others have said. There will be a menu option "SQL" you'll need to set. Make sure it's the lowest number that produces silence rather than background noise.

The UV5R has a button (MONI) below the PTT which you can hold in to temporarily disable the squelch and let you hear the noise to pick out a weak transmission.

Put 70cms aside for the time being and concentrate on 2m. To test your radio, tune to 144.800MHz and hold in MONI so you hear background noise. Get outside or somewhere high up. You should hear random data bursts coming from mobile APRS stations transmitting their location. It'll sound like computer noise and might take you a minute to hear one. You'll know if you hear one. I think Mark showed these transmissions on the course.

Admittedly not human voices, but it'll validate your radio is working.

Call CQ repeatedly on 145.500MHz, all hours of the day and if someone can hear you, they'll reply.

Failing that, the frequencies Pete lists for tomorrow's net should give you a human to receive with transmissions coming from all over the county.

Hope you can catch up with Pete to test your rig 1-2-1, and I'll second his offer if you find yourself in Southend.

Best of luck!
- Nick, M0NFE