Due to Chip Shortage, Some Baofengs May Not Be Equipped to Receive FM Broadcast

[PACNWComms]

I have an Anytone with FM receiver and have used it a few times, just to hear local news and to see if the reception is available in a remote or rural area. Works as a great accessory for that type of use. However, I have a co-worker that bought a Baofeng, then a Nagoya antenna about two feet long, as the "math" says that this antenna will give better performance on the FM broadcast band. So of course, this meant testing the Anytone and Baofeng side by side, with no perceptible difference on FM broadcast, at least to our ears.....if we had looked at dB levels it may have been different.

But, I can't get the guy to even bring the radio into work again, several people hassled him with the two foot antenna on a cheap Chinese radio, sticking out of a backpack (he was trying to LARP as a forward observer (guy is retired Navy avionics technician that tries to tell people he called air strikes in Afghanistan.....we all see through it). As for including FM broadcast, I find it useful to have as a feature, just like FRS/GMRS radios that came with Weather receivers, and Weather Alert functions, it is a plus over those radios that lack these features.

[zzz]

I ran into the same problem. Twice. Kind of disappointing. 

[WRTF629]

Just got another black one today and it has fm radio. I gave the other black one to my dad to use on the farm for the longer range than his frs radio.

[WRUK284]

I recently bought 2 UV-5R's and both have no FM function. I just sent them back to Amazon.

[WRUA294]

On 6/20/2022 at 4:03 PM, WRTF629 said:

I got 2 baofeng gmrs-9r, one receives fm ( black one) the other does not (green one).

My GMRS 9R actually displays the FM frequencies on the screen but doesn't receive them.

[WRTF629]

WRUA294  

Sounds like you got one with out fm. What color was it?

[WRUA294]

On 9/18/2022 at 9:47 PM, WRTF629 said:

WRUA294  

Sounds like you got one with out fm. What color was it?

It's black and it's the second one I've tried. Just as a side note, these radios seem to transmit ok but have very poor reception. Have you noticed this?

[JLeikhim]

Wake me up when Baofenshuii has a shortage of flashlight LED s and can no longer offer that "feature" either.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

[MichaelLAX]

17 hours ago, JLeikhim said:

Wake me up when Baofenshuii has a shortage of flashlight LED s and can no longer offer that "feature" either.

Surely you know that you can reprogram the side buttons to other functions and NEVER use your LED flashlight! 

And don't call me Shirley!

[KAF6045]

18 hours ago, JLeikhim said:

Wake me up when Baofenshuii has a shortage of flashlight LED s and can no longer offer that "feature" either.

Won't be enough as, besides BTech, Retevis and Wouxun also have LED flash light mode (and some even have flashing mode). I even have some old bubble-pack pre-2017 FRS/GMRS units with LEDs (on the bottom -- which could be more useful in the dark to illuminate the path while one is still using the radio function)

 

[WRTF629]

I just got another black one and it had fm radio. I got off amazon from abbree. Mine seems to have good reception but the green one has the best reception.

[Ride2Litte]

A bit late to the party but this may no longer be an issue as I ordered a pair of Beofeng UV-9G on 2/8/23.  Although the device had all but ONE of the radio features programmed correctly, both devices do have the FM radio feature.  (The NOAA bands were still in the scan list. But this was easily disabled via CHIRP...on my MAC nonetheless.)  Very pleased with these GMRS HT's.