Help programming a TYT-350TH analogue HT

Hi all, well after an aborted attempt to get a working Baofeng 1702B working I decided to switch to analogue. I will come back to digital. Think it is the way of the future.
I bought a TYT-350TH Triband radio from buytwowayradios.com (they’re great BTW).
I’ve used the app that TYT provided as well as CHIRP to successfully program the unit. No problem.
I have 2 issues. I’ll take them one at a time here.
This radio displays 3 lines rather that 2 like the Baofengs. You have the option of display Channel, Frequency or Name. You can add an alphanumeric name field when you program the channel and then in both the radio or in the options page in the PC program as that NAME be displayed. I can get the Channel and Freq options to work, but I can’t get the NAME display to work. I’m trying to see my repeater names that I have programmed to various channels.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Alan KC1NYL

I’m completely not familiar with the TYT’s (although a TH9800 Plus is of interest here to replace a very non-servicable modded dual Pye hybrid on 4/6m).

But if the TYT’s are anything like Wouxun stuff (that I’m more accustomed to) then you’ll probably find that whilst you can put in friendly labels/names to be displayed via CPS programming, unless you either set a specific display mode per preset (so the radio will show frequencies when not in preset memory mode) then you’ll probably find in preset mode on radio it’ll just show ‘Channel xx’ or show a memory number and nothing else freq wise.

Even where that is applicable, I’m not saying it definitely is on TYT and many brands, some radios you need to change the main program display mode to ALPHA or TEXT (or something similar) via radio menu or CPS global settings.

Where that’s the case, that setting ties down the standard display mode and preset specific settings override it depending on which preset is selected.

Since a lack a radio to test the theories with, and don’t like cold quoting manual text without testing and being familiar with the operation, I’ll just say any of those two could be why you aren’t seeing name displayed.

A closing thought - if you’re bulk editing via a spreadsheet to create importable CVS files (I assume TYT CPS offers the means), it’s worth checking what alphanumeric encoding is being exported for text elements. Whilst Unicode and suchlike text encodings are commonly supported on mp3 players, DVD etc so we tend to use such to easily use foreign characters, a lot of radios don’t accept Unicode and even if what’s put into CPS, by import or copy/paste is Unicode, it may get written to radio’s memory bank but not displayable because the radio’s f/w or even display hardware can’t handle Unicode.

That’s one outside possibility, but unlikely.

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Good morning Chris.
Thanks for your thoughts. In truth this my first HT and I have no experience with others.
So, I’ve used both the TYT provided application and CHIRP to program the radio. The TYT program works nicely though it is not without it’s idiosyncratic features. For instance, rather than entering the primary frequency and offset for a repeater, you enter the first frequency, do the math with the offset and enter the second frequency. Not a big issue, but different and different still from the way you program the 350 from its keyboard!
When you set up a channel you have the choice of displays: Freq, Chan, Name in CPS. This unit has 3 display lines and you can set these options up on each line. You can also set these options on the HT and I set NAME in both places, but no love there.
If you take a look at this video on youtube How to program a TYT TH-350 Triband Ham Radio HT – It’s easy!! - YouTube you’ll see he has both CHAN and NAME lines displaying, but does not really show you how he got there. {sad face here}
As to the character set that’s not an issue. I’m a basic ASCII kind of guy and I’m not importing a spreadsheet for this information.
So, I remain confused, not an unusual situation for me. I’ll keep poking around to see if I can sort things out. I’ll update here.
Thanks again for your input.
Most appreciated.
KC1NYL

It appears it needs to be set in the Optional Features part of the software, plus one has the ability to change it from the keyboard. Make sure under Optional Features that all three are set to Name and that you have typed in a name for each channel. Then go into the radio and see if they need to be changed manually, through menu item 020, 021 and 022. Try it on three channels. If it still doesn’t work, it could be that your channel names are too long. On some TYT radios, longer names scroll, but on others, it may not display at all.

It appears the limit is 9 characters, but that might be for numbers with a decimal place. Reduce the names to 9, then to 8, then to 7. See what happens.

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Thanks for the ideas. I’m going to clear all my programming and try again.
I like you length limit idea I might approach it the other way and set the name at a single character and work my up.
I’ll let you know what happens.

I’ve been out of commission for a while due to some health stuff, but I’m back at it now.
So, I reset everything to factory. Downloaded the software again and started over.
Low and behold things are now working the way they should. I can get name, channel and/or frequency display from the software or from the menu setting on the HT itself.
I’m in northeastern MA and have a nice selection of repeaters around so off to give things a try.
Thanks for the help.

I have the same problem. In both TYT and Chirp software the channel names are limited to 5 characters, which seems too short. However I still can’t make the radio display the correct names. What I get are fragments, or two name partially merged.
Could you please tell me how to perform a factory reset? I can’t find this information anywhere.
As for the 12.5 kHz step, I think this is a Chirp bug, and I signalled it on Chirp forum.
I watched the Youtube video and I think there can be another software version used (in TYT software it is TH-350US, mine is just TH-350).

To perform a reset on the TH-350, first turn off the radio. While holding down the PTT and the Menu keys, turn the radio on. The radio should display RESET with VFO below it. Use the Up/Down keys to choose VFO or ALL, then press the Menu button to confirm. WAIT will appear on the screen for about 10 seconds or so and the radio should reset.

Thank you very much. I reset the radio, used the TYT software to set few channels, but channel names still don’t appear correctly. It seems this might be some error in radio firmware. What may be important, in TYT software, my radio is “TH-350”, while in the aforementioned youtube video it shows “TH-350US”. Maybe there are really different versions.

I have a TH-350 and had the same problem with the “Names” in the middle line.
I had purchased RT Systems software and even that didn’t work.
So I called RT and they were not familiar with it, they would look into it. A couple of weeks later, I went to use the program and just for grins, I checked for upgrades. It did upgrade, and sure enough, the names problem is solved! Now I’d like to see the channel number next to the names, that would be helpful. I like this radio, it’s rugged and sensitive.

I had the same issue with the software version listed for download on BuyTwoWayRadios. A different version does in fact show up as TH-350US when opened. It can be downloaded from the TYT website Download_TYT Electronics Co., Ltd. |DMR products|Handheld radio|Mobile radio|Repeater|DPMR products|WCDMA|WCDMA/4G LTE|2G/3G Walike-talkie|Analog two way radios|Amateur radio|Commercial radio|Accessories series|Frequency counter|Antenna adaptor|Adaptor|Antenna|Earphone|Car charger|Charger|Microphone|Other accessories where it is listed as “TH-350 Software 2019.” The direct link is https://www.tyt888.com/uploads/file/20210706/20210706093408_3188.zip

I too wish you could show the name AND channel number together, as it does the frequency and channel number together and there is plenty of room to do so.

I see this was solved with the newest RT Systems software, but I hope this helps someone else as it took some digging to find.