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Pretty wild stuff. Glad they had working radios with them and people to correspond with, too. If they were in trouble, it may have saved their lives. Just being stranded or cutoff from leaving is enough to make someone panic. Sometimes, just having a voice on the other end and some mildly useful information can really make the difference on the psychological impact of a situation.

Normally there’s a product box that fits the white plastic liner better. See how there’s a sizable gap between the plastic liner and the brown cardboard box? It looks like whoever shipped that to you removed the product box ( which is made of white tagboard and colorfully printed and fits inside the brown cardboard shipping container) and put the white liner with the radio in it and the plastic wrap directly into the corrugated cardboard shipping box. That may have been done to provide room around the inside of the shipping box for your longer antenna.

Wondering it anyone on here might have a copy of the band change software for an anytone at5888uv dual band, for the 1.0 firmware (pre 08/2013 build dates) that they could send me, just got a steal of a deal on a 5888, but it is currently locked to professional mode, which only allows freqs on the 430-440 mhz spectrum for uhf. The version 1.0 cps does not allow band changes, and i have tried the 2.0cps to no avail, as well as the 5888uvIII unlock tool to no avail either.

Wow, good to hear you and your friends are safe.

My RV Friends are just now getting out of Bear Creek Texas, untouched by the floods because they were camped high enough.. They say the devastation is unmanageable and the amount of rain they got in short period was beyond belief.. They've been staying in touch with the world via their GMRS radios, which they say were very busy by both rescue groups and people in general. There cell service has been spotty and just now coming back, they even had a hard time senidng text, which i thought worked off satellites now.. I would have been on the trip with them but had last minute issues with my VGT Exhaust break and still in the shop for a $4,500 repair.. (3weeks latter)... Thank god they are all safe..

Somewhat related to my comments about the Comet 2x4, on the roof of my car, the Austin Metropolitan tri-band antenna performs quite nicely across 5 bands. Well, at least 4 bands. Like the Comet, I haven't tried it on MURS, but it has an acceptable SWR. I can't tell that it gives up any distance to the Comet on 2m or 70cm. It does cost me about a mile, maybe 2 miles in some directions, versus the Comet on GMRS, but IMO that's not enough to quibble about. On 1.25m, it actually outperforms the 52" dedicated 1.25m antenna on my truck. I already had it ordered before I thought to test the 1.25m SWR on the Comet and it's several inches shorter than the Comet, so I just swapped it without trying the Comet on 1.25m. As I said above, I probably will someday.

I was very impressed with the Midland Ghost antenna. If I didn't need an antenna for multiple bands, I'd still be using it. Where I do most of my driving, distance is limited mostly by terrain, not by the antenna, so I can't say for sure whether you'd give up some farz with it, but it's definitely worth a look. The Comet 2x4 is a remarkably good antenna. If I didn't want to use the 1.25 meter band, it's the only antenna I'd use. Mounted on the roof of my car with a good ground plane, it has good SWRs (~1.2-1.4:1) and good performance on GMRS, 70cm, and 2m. It also has an excellent SWR on MURS, although I haven't tried its performance on that band. Surprisingly, it has a very good SWR on 1.25m as well, but I haven't tested its performance on that band. It's not claimed to be tuned for that band, and I'd be amazed if it performed well, but I'll probably try it someday.

Getting back to the original post, it’s truly unimportant whether it was an original Baofeng box, an oversized shipping box, or something else entirely.. What’s important is that the OP must contact the vendor to get the antenna that was advertised.

the first radio i bought from Baoefang Tech was a BF-H6.. It came completely unlocked and operable up to 520Mhz. I notice now they shipped locked at 450MHz.

i have 3 5rQ's each one shipped with the Antenna laying in the box (top) diagonally across. The antenna would not fit in the box placed straight vertical. Each box is identical cardboard with Baofeng on two sides.

+1 on the speaker mic. The sound on them is legible but tinny and the PTT button is waaaaaaay too sensitive.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, but you are demonstrably wrong. I bought this radio in October for a project I didn't end up doing and it has been packed just the way I received it since. This is how the radio came with the antenna wrapped around the inside of the box. As you can see, it comes out of the box almost perfectly straight. I have gotten several this way and all of them lost that little bit of bend eventually.

@TerriKennedy If you have any influence with BTech, two things I'd like to see them make higher quality versions of are (1) battery eliminators (my experience is with ones for UV-5R and compatible models), and (2) speaker mics. A third would be earphones with mic button with a more durable cord (I've replaced a bunch of those). I use the earphones indoors but would like to use the speaker mic outside if there was a good one available.

This is a good thing. My first hand held I bought was a GT-5R from BTech's Amazon store. I was missing the ear piece and they were very quick to respond when I contacted them. They went above and beyond, they sent a new charging base, ear piece and a hand mic.

That should be an interesting review. People have had bad experiences with through glass antennas when installed on vehicles with tinted windows. Some of those use metal in the glass. Surprised nobody mentions to watch out for this.

Wow! looks a lot better than my collection of radios stuff into plastic food storage boxes on a couple of roll-around shelve units.

Terri, that’s an impressive stack of uniformly sized boxes. At least through BTech, it appears that Baofeng has a standard single radio box. That makes sense from a cost standpoint. I wouldn’t want either a small rattler or a long antenna bent nearly double in one of those boxes. Randy, let Terri be. She’s one of the good ones we really want to keep. She doesn’t come here and act like one of the several resident assholes we’ve had. She backs up her points with facts, figures, and photos. I have no idea whether the boxes you’ve experienced are differently printed but same size (as her photos indicate happens) or whether you have received 34 different sizes, but the argument isn’t really important enough to drive one of the good ones away. I don’t doubt that some sellers bend 15” flexible antennas to fit the boxes, but one time it happened to me the antenna took on a bit of a permanent arch. A friend gifted me a Wouxun and couldn’t find the original rubber duck so he bent his 15” antenna into the outer shipping box and sent it instead. The other time I received a 15” antenna it was in my packaged with my very first Baofeng, in a larger box with a “covert earpiece”, a PTT microphone, a charger, etc. some of the pieces, like the antenna, were marked TidRadio, and others said Baofeng. Perhaps some value added reseller put together a special package of accessories as so many on the Amazon Marketplace do. In any case, it’s not important enough to berate people over.

More lies and misinformation Tammy! People stand up and call BS to my face every day.

I was going to let this slide. But hey, it's Tuesday and I'm under my quota of arguments for the week so far... 1) It's Terri with an "i", short for Teresa. Which you'd know if you'd ever used any of my CPS programs. 2) Standard box size. Let's see. Here's a picture of 16 different Baofeng models in their boxes. I'm sorry I could only stack 4 high by 4 wide before I ran out of space. Front and top views. These are all single radios (which is what started this post). Obviously a box for a pair of radios, or more, would be larger. 3) "Nearly every radio manufactured by Baofeng (dozens)" Yup. Riggghhhhttttt. I have 34 different models, all unboxed, right now in my line of sight, not to mention the ones in the boxes in the pictures. Nor all of the ones I've given away. Here's a screen capture from a Baofeng factory promotional video where it shows just a small part of their showroom before the image pans around and looks down rows and rows of different models on display. 4) I could probably stuff a small rattlesnake into a standard size Baofeng box. Neither it, a 15" antenna, or the customer would be happy when the box was opened. You come along, all high and mighty with your proclamations here because you're a Youtube superstar with (as of just now) 266K subscribers and almost nobody is willing to stand up and call "BS" to your face. Well, surprise! Note that I only wrote this reply because you tried just about everything you could to provoke a response from me. Normally I'm easygoing and try to be helpful when answering questions here, without sarcasm or denigrating the other person. Now, let's all return to our respective corners and try to behave civilly, OK?

At least with BTECH, you know you're dealing with a real human in South Dakota.

You may want to google what gear we used to use on these...

Calm down Queenie. I was trying to get him to understand it's not "dual on both". Sounded like by both bands he may also be thinking of bands A and B as the two frequency bands in VFO mode, rather than Line A and B.

Which to a normal person, using normal ears, appears to be "listening to two channels at the same time"... Next you going to explain to us how "movies don't really move"? Geezusphuckingkrist "some people" are insufferable..

Sounds like you're misunderstanding. There is no "dual monitoring on both bands". It alternates automatically between checking Display A and Display B. It only receives on one or the other at one time. And the dual watch setting is called TDR on the UV5R function menu.

No wait! the earth is flat...google that S@#t