BAOFENG handhelds poor performance between vehicles?

[IamConfusion]

I've used the blister pack FRS radios for a long time for vehicle to vehicle communication on multi-vehicle road trips.  Just recently decided I wanted, or thought I wanted, to move away from the FRS world and into the GMRS radio world.  Grabbed my license, grabbed some   BAOFENG UV-5G (UV-5X) radios off Amazon.  Felt pretty good about the whole thing, watched a bunch of YouTube videos to kind of understand the radios and features etc. 

Jump forward to this weekend and my first road trip, talked my friend into a GMRS license before the trip, so handed out my shiny new GRMS radios, hopped in our cars, fired off a radio check and womp womp... the quality is awful...  Only a few hundred feet from each other and transmits are weak and choppy from either handset.  I had a set of long high gain antennas in the box I didn't think would be needed but we tried them, but it made no difference.  I can hear others very clearly, I can hear repeaters very clearly, just not my radios for some reason.

Before I write these radios off and junk and throw them in the ecycle pile, is there something my novice self is just missing here? 

The pile of cheap FRS radios I have work great vehicle to vehicle, I would  have expected (maybe wrongly) that GRMS would have worked similarly up close but would have had added better range and the ability to use repeaters if needed.

[amaff]

It's not a "GMRS Radio" thing, it's a "Baofeng quality control" thing. Some are great. Some are less good, and you never know which one you're going to get.

Your expectations aren't wrong about GMRS in general. But you might have gotten a pair from a bad batch, unfortunately.

 

[IamConfusion]

29 minutes ago, amaff said:

It's not a "GMRS Radio" thing, it's a "Baofeng quality control" thing. Some are great. Some are less good, and you never know which one you're going to get.

Your expectations aren't wrong about GMRS in general. But you might have gotten a pair from a bad batch, unfortunately.

 

Thanks for the reply.  So, are the Tx radios just junk in these particular radios?  Assume if it's a physical issue there isn't much I can do to get them up and going?

[SteveShannon]

49 minutes ago, IamConfusion said:

I've used the blister pack FRS radios for a long time for vehicle to vehicle communication on multi-vehicle road trips.  Just recently decided I wanted, or thought I wanted, to move away from the FRS world and into the GMRS radio world.  Grabbed my license, grabbed some   BAOFENG UV-5G (UV-5X) radios off Amazon.  Felt pretty good about the whole thing, watched a bunch of YouTube videos to kind of understand the radios and features etc. 

Jump forward to this weekend and my first road trip, talked my friend into a GMRS license before the trip, so handed out my shiny new GRMS radios, hopped in our cars, fired off a radio check and womp womp... the quality is awful...  Only a few hundred feet from each other and transmits are weak and choppy from either handset.  I had a set of long high gain antennas in the box I didn't think would be needed but we tried them, but it made no difference.  I can hear others very clearly, I can hear repeaters very clearly, just not my radios for some reason.

Before I write these radios off and junk and throw them in the ecycle pile, is there something my novice self is just missing here? 

The pile of cheap FRS radios I have work great vehicle to vehicle, I would  have expected (maybe wrongly) that GRMS would have worked similarly up close but would have had added better range and the ability to use repeaters if needed.

I’m guessing you have some settings wrong. GMRS should never work worse than FRS. But without more information it’s difficult to say.  What channels are you trying to use to talk to each other?  What’s your power output? Are you on wide band or narrow?  How do they work outside of the cars?  How far apart were you?

Try to isolate whatever problems you’re having.  Do others hear a poor signal coming from both of your radios or one in particular? 

[IamConfusion]

1 minute ago, SteveShannon said:

I’m guessing you have some settings wrong. GMRS should never work worse than FRS. But without more information it’s difficult to say.  What channels are you trying to use to talk to each other?  What’s your power output? Are you on wide band or narrow?  How do they work outside of the cars?  How far apart were you?

Try to isolate whatever problems you’re having.  Do others hear a poor signal coming from both of your radios or one in particular? 

I'm not sure which settings are relevant, but will gladly provide anything helpful.

We tried channels 1-7 with the same results.
Power output was set to high.

I'm not sure on wide or narrow.  I did see a setting for UHF and VHF, we tried each with no difference. 

They seemed to work well outside of the cars but we were usually standing next to each other.

Distance was a few car lengths. Maybe couple hundred feet. 

I don't know anyone outside of my two radios to check if others can hear me.  I haven't tried jumping into any conversations I've heard and I'm not even sure the ones I heard that weren't on a repeater were GMRS and not FRS as I never heard a single callsign all day. 

[SteveShannon]

7 minutes ago, IamConfusion said:

I'm not sure which settings are relevant, but will gladly provide anything helpful.

We tried channels 1-7 with the same results.
Power output was set to high.

I'm not sure on wide or narrow.  I did see a setting for UHF and VHF, we tried each with no difference. 

They seemed to work well outside of the cars but we were usually standing next to each other.

Distance was a few car lengths. Maybe couple hundred feet. 

I don't know anyone outside of my two radios to check if others can hear me.  I haven't tried jumping into any conversations I've heard and I'm not even sure the ones I heard that weren't on a repeater were GMRS and not FRS as I never heard a single callsign all day. 

Switch to a channel between 15-22 and try again.  Some channels are limited for power.  Others are limited to narrow band.  Those limitations should be applied automatically by the radio.  15-22 are high power allowed and wide band. And turn your squelch down, not all the way, but 1 or 2.

And I don’t know what’s up with the setting for UHF/VHF.  All GMRS channels are UHF.

[Socalgmrs]

Yea its either a settings thing or a Quality control issue.  Line of sight even with a rubber duck stock antenna should be 10miles or more.  Yes the inside of the car will have some effect but a mile or more should be no issue at all.   My uv5r radios do about 5 miles inside cars when I’m traveling in rentals or other peoples cars that dont have mobiles.   And the 771 15” antennas usually double the distance of the stock antenna.    But even in cars traveling the 2” stubby usually works fine.  

[IamConfusion]

6 hours ago, SteveShannon said:

Switch to a channel between 15-22 and try again.  Some channels are limited for power.  Others are limited to narrow band.  Those limitations should be applied automatically by the radio.  15-22 are high power allowed and wide band. And turn your squelch down, not all the way, but 1 or 2.

And I don’t know what’s up with the setting for UHF/VHF.  All GMRS channels are UHF.

I didn't realize the upper channels would make that much of a difference.  I'll have to test, should I assume lower channels aren't powerful enough for close vehicles conversation? 

[IamConfusion]

5 hours ago, Socalgmrs said:

Yea its either a settings thing or a Quality control issue.  Line of sight even with a rubber duck stock antenna should be 10miles or more.  Yes the inside of the car will have some effect but a mile or more should be no issue at all.   My uv5r radios do about 5 miles inside cars when I’m traveling in rentals or other peoples cars that dont have mobiles.   And the 771 15” antennas usually double the distance of the stock antenna.    But even in cars traveling the 2” stubby usually works fine.  

Yea what you describe is more of what I expected honestly.  Sorta feel like I got a bad batch like has been mentioned.  I effectively haven't changed any out of the box settings.  I turned off the voice call-out feature and changed the mentioned uhf vhf settings while we were struggling but that's really it.  Not sure how to troubleshoot it.

[SteveShannon]

1 minute ago, IamConfusion said:

I didn't realize the upper channels would make that much of a difference.  I'll have to test, should I assume lower channels aren't powerful enough for close vehicles conversation? 

No, not necessarily, but there are differences. 1-7 are limited to 5 watts and maybe wideband. 8-14 are limited to 0.5 watts and narrow band. 
15-22 are limited to 50 watts and may be wide. 

[IamConfusion]

So guess I'm still not sure what action to take.  I'm passed my return window on Amazon so I'm at least stuck with them.  Does Boafeng offer any useful support/warranty? 

Is there any other info I might provide that might be useful for troubleshooting? 

[SteveShannon]

I would contact Baofeng to see if they will warrant them. Honestly I haven’t seen many Baofeng failures like you describe. I have seen microphone jack failures. 
Have you tried doing a full factory reset?  Might not hurt. 
Otherwise I would recommend taking them to someone who has some experience to see it they think they’re bad or incorrectly configured. 

[OffRoaderX]

Have you tried comparing your FRS radios to the Baofengs, in the exact same cars with the exact same people at the exact same time, just to ensure you are actually getting a full apple-to-apple comparison?

[WRQI663]

Was it the signal strength? Or, was it not talking where the mic input is? That would make for low audio and a bad signal reception.

Don't hold it like it is a phone, you may not be getting to the mic loud enough.

[IamConfusion]

10 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:

Have you tried comparing your FRS radios to the Baofengs, in the exact same cars with the exact same people at the exact same time, just to ensure you are actually getting a full apple-to-apple comparison?

I have not, but that could be a good test. 

[IamConfusion]

1 hour ago, WRQI663 said:

Was it the signal strength? Or, was it not talking where the mic input is? That would make for low audio and a bad signal reception.

Don't hold it like it is a phone, you may not be getting to the mic loud enough.

I really don't know.  It sounds like signal strength to me, it's choppy fuzzy and weak.  I believe we were holding them properly, I've been a CB guy for a LONG time and have used FRS radios for a while for those that didn't have CB etc.  So I think everyone involved was familiar enough with how to properly hold and talk into a handheld so I don't believe that is the issue.

[LeoG]

On 11/3/2024 at 10:54 AM, Socalgmrs said:

Yea its either a settings thing or a Quality control issue.  Line of sight even with a rubber duck stock antenna should be 10miles or more.  Yes the inside of the car will have some effect but a mile or more should be no issue at all.   My uv5r radios do about 5 miles inside cars when I’m traveling in rentals or other peoples cars that dont have mobiles.   And the 771 15” antennas usually double the distance of the stock antenna.    But even in cars traveling the 2” stubby usually works fine.  

Stop it.  Line of site maybe 7 miles but it's going to be scratchy.

[OffRoaderX]

On 11/3/2024 at 7:54 AM, Socalgmrs said:

Line of sight even with a rubber duck stock antenna should be 10miles or more.  Yes the inside of the car will have some effect but a mile or more should be no issue at all.

You should stop showing everyone how ignorant/disconnected from reality you are because people are laughing.

[dosw]

21 hours ago, IamConfusion said:

I didn't realize the upper channels would make that much of a difference.  I'll have to test, should I assume lower channels aren't powerful enough for close vehicles conversation? 

On a UV-5G or UV-5X channels 1-7 will be around 4w. Channels 8-14 will be around a half watt. Channels 15-22 will be around 4w. Your best FRS radio will be about 2w/0.5w/2w for those same channels.

 

You get pretty good range outside the vehicle, you mentioned. And poor range inside the vehicle. A 771 antenna can help but it's not really the answer; I can't hold a 771 vertically inside my car, can you? The answer is to get an inexpensive magnetic mount antenna for each vehicle, such as https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TPZ221K?ref=emc_s_m_5_i_atc (Nagoya UT72G). This is a 3dBi antenna, which is relatively low gain, but it's an all-in-one kit; the antenna on a magnetic mount, cable, and even an adapter for the radio, all for under $35. And it gets the antenna outside of the vehicle.

 

Another alternative is to go all in; get an antenna such as the MXTA26 ($59), buy a mount for it ($29), and an adapter for your radio ($10), for a total of $98, per vehicle. That will get you one of the best mobile 6dBi antennas you can find for GMRS. But it's probably not necessary to go to that expense. Just getting your antenna outside of the faraday cage, known as the automobile interior, you'll achieve much better signal propagation. Mount the magnetic mount in the middle of the vehicle's roof, for each vehicle.

 

There's no handheld that will do very well when its antenna is inside the vehicle. This all assumes, of course, that there's nothing wrong with your radios in the first place. But there probably isn't. In the end, spending more on the antenna than on the radio is rather par for the course. That's where you get the biggest improvement.

[SteveShannon]

10 minutes ago, dosw said:

spending more on the antenna than on the radio is rather par for the course.

Especially if a person buys an inexpensive radio. 

[LeoG]

Just like me buying a dust collector for my shop and then spending 20% more than the dust collector to buy the duct work to connect it to the machines.