I work at Walmart and we have Motorola VHF radios.
Recently, I couldn’t hear anything anymore when my headset is plugged into my Motorola store radio. So, I’ve been bringing my Baofeng UV-5R5 with me to listen off of, along with my Motorola radio to transmit with.
We constantly are talking on our radios, especially during weekends. My Baofeng does pretty well, but it will randomly stop receiving at least twice per eight hour shift. I will notice it will be very quiet, and I just turn my radio off and back on. Once it turns back on, I will hear someone talking mid sentence.
Has anyone else had a problem like this? How can this be fixed? I keep missing out on conversations. Thanks!
Well, it seems you may have a bad headset for your Motorola radio… just have them issue you a new one.
The Baofeng may be incorrectly programmed… You may have a CTCSS tone programed incorrectly, or not used, where one should be used. HOWEVER, if the tone was wrong, you’d likely not hear anything at all… so this is kind of reaching. There is a possibility of a defective radio, since the problem is intermittent.
The headset is fine, as I originally thought the same. The headset works fine plugged into my phone. Also, any headset I test on my radio does not hear unless the plug is pressed and held into the jack with heavy force. I would suspect the jack on the radio is the issue. Two other associates have also had problems with the 3.5mm jack on their radios within the past 3 months.
The store does not have any spare radios at the moment. I’m not technically supposed to have a radio at my job level, but since I’m trained as a backup front end supervisor, I got lucky.
There are no tones programmed. I even went through all of the 40 menu options and programmed everything I needed to when I bought the radio.
Is the Motorola an RDM2070d or RM series MURS radio? If so, are you using a standard 3.5mm headset designed for a cell phone? Are you attempting to use the same headset on the Baofeng? If so, you may have a connector mismatch.
The Motorola MURS radios use a two pin Motorola (M1) connector. The UV-5R uses a 2 pin Kenwood (K1) connector. While the two connectors are similar, the pins of the K1 are farther apart and slightly different in length.
Most versions of the UV-5R use the same connector jack as the original. It was specifically designed for use with the K1 connector, so if you are using a a standard consumer grade 3.5mm stereo headset, it isn’t quite compatible with your radio, which is probably why your audio cuts in and out.
My Motorola is the custom RDM2070d. I was using the original Motorola 2 pin headset with the Motorola. With the UV-5R5, I was using the included headset (with the microphone pin removed), and then tried a 2.5mm listen only earpiece as well. The issue still occured. The UV-5R5 uses a 2.5mm jack for hearing, and 3.5mm for the microphone (backwards from the US).
The headsets are fine, though. The problem with the audio cutting is corrected by turning the radio on and off. It’s not an audio flickering issue, just a complete stop of receiving until the radio is restarted.
I’ve tried both narrow band and wide band, and tried turning the squelch down. Whatever the issue is, it did not occur yesterday. It seems to happen usually once or twice per day with continuous use.
Ah, that changes things. I based part of my response on your second post as you mentioned you tried it on your phone and your co-workers had trouble with their 3.5mm jack, which lead me to think you were using a consumer headset with a 3.5mm connector.
The more information we have in the original post, the easier it is to provide a correct answer.
Why you didn’t ask the seller for help? You bought them from there, they should solve the quality issues non-human damage,as they are professional. If they couldn’t, you could buy Baofeng UV-5R, as you like it. You all use one model of walkie talkie, it is also not so expensive,and when you buy make sure the shop have a good after-sale. Hope it could help you.