So I recently purchased the baofeng uv5r with the intention on monitoring the forestry roads. I do a lot of back country camping and the roads a pretty terrible so I try to do anything I can to avoid meeting a logging truck on them. I.e. Monitor the radio. So they use pre set channels for differ roads (example rr 16) and I can find the frequency for these online however when I’m on the frequency it won’t receive. The screen will light up by nothing with come through the speaker. I also notice that if I do hit the transmit button it jumps to another frequency while its held down. I wonder if this is some kind of encryption or if I have to program my radio or something. Just not really sure at all. I’m new to the two way style radios. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
you are operating in the duplex mode…it will TX with the offset that is programmed in.
Your instruction book, though poorly written should tell you how to put it in the simplex mode…
The short answer is the radio needs to be programmed.
The longer answer is your chances of monitoring the radio communications on forestry roads will depend on a number of variables. For instance, if all the communications are analog, they are open (no voice scramble, companding or other features inherent in many radios to get in the way of clear monitoring), and the UV-5R can hit those frequencies, as long as you are within range, you will probably pick them up. If the communications are digital, using some sort of encryption or they are using frequencies outside the range of the UV-5R, chances are you won’t pick up much, if anything, at all.
If all you want to do is listen, you may be better off with a scanner than a two way radio. The scanning capabilities of the UV-5R are not designed for scanning entire frequency bands with high efficiency and speed. It’s really designed for scanning a limited set of frequencies programmed into 128 channels.
A scanner is also safer, since inadvertently hitting the transmit button of the UV-5R on frequencies licensed to forestry services, emergency services or logging companies can get you into trouble.
The Baofeng UV-5R may be inexpensive, but it certainly is not a toy. This is a powerful little handheld radio with a lot of capabilities. With those capabilities comes responsibility. There are a lot of great resources available on the net to help learn the basics of radio and how to operate the UV-5R. Browsing some of the topics and threads in this forum will help get you started.
If you bought the radio to “monitor”, why are you pressing the transmit button? You are not licensed or authorized to transmit.
The other answers answered your question regarding operation/programming.
Thanks tips! Always gotta be one of you hey. For the non d bags on here the offset and tone were not set right. Pretty easy fix when i dug into it.