Hi all, my wife and I are new here and new two way radios. I just have a question.
We are going to be out in the middle of Nevada on a road trip later this week and we just bought a new BAOFENG UV-5RV2+ radio. We intend to get into Ham radios and to eventually getting our license and learning more about Ham Radios etc.
In the meantime we are just starting to learn how to use our new radio and I have already tuned into NOA for weather in our area and will do the same for when we are in Nevada.
What my question is, is this… when we are down in Nevada, how can we use the Radio to just scan the area where we are at in Nevada just to listen in on anyone in the area. (not intending to talk as we don’t have our license etc).
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. So far we have not found very good information on how to use this radio as of yet and the handbook is not very user friendly to newbies.
You bought a two way radio with memories, NOT a scanner. With these radios, you can scan frequencies you have entered manually into the memories, or go up and down channel by channel from the frequency you type in, which takes forever. A scanner searches, stores and then you can scan the memories. The Baofeng is pretty naff at finding things. Not what they’re designed to do. The up/down speed is not that fast, so you’ll miss very short transmissions. The best you can do is a google session to gather the frequencies on line for the area you will be in, and then enter these, and then scan them - but the scan speed isn’t that fast, so don’t enter too many.
I would agree with that assessment. The Baofeng radio is really not suited for use as a scanner for several reasons. First, you would need to know all the frequencies in the area you want to scan. Second, you would need to program them all into the radio. Sure, technically you could just let it scan every frequency on a band, but it will take a very long time to complete one scan. Third, a scan will be slow and methodical. This is simply because the scan is just another feature of a two way radio and not its primary function.
With a scanner, you simply set it up to pick up any active frequencies within range, select the frequencies you want to monitor, and go. The primary job of the scanner is to scan, so it will typically do so at much higher rate and much more efficiently than a typical transceiver.
Well thanks for redponding. This is all pretty advanced info for me. Ok so i shouldnt scan. So what/where is the best way to find frequencies in an area to tune into.
It depends on what you are trying to receive. You can find NOAA weather channels at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/ and search for the frequencies in the area.