The Baofeng UV-5R radios on our bikes seem absurdly sensitive to intermodulation interference, particularly on rides across the Walkway Over the Hudson, which has a glorious view of the repeaters and paging transmitters atop Illinois Mountain:

A better view of the assortment on the right:

And on the left:

Not shown: the Sheriff’s Office transmitter behind us on the left and the Vassar Brothers Hospital / MidHudson pagers on either side at eye level. There’s plenty of RFI boresighted on the Walkway.

Anyhow, none of the Baofeng squelch settings had any effect, which turned out to be a known problem. The default range VHF covered a whopping 6 dB and the UHF wasn’t much better at 18 dB, both at very low RF power levels.

We use the radios in simplex mode, generally within line of sight, so I changed the Service Settings to get really aggressive squelch:

I have no way to calibrate the new signal levels, but I’d previously cranked the squelch up to 9 (it doesn’t go any higher) and, left unchanged, the new level makes all the previous interference Go Away™. Another ride over the Walkway with the squelch set to 4 also passed in blissful silence.

If the BF-F9 levels mean anything on a UV-5R, that’s about -100 dBm, 20 dB over the previous -120 dBm at squelch = 9.

The new squelch levels may be too tight for any other use, which doesn’t matter for these radios. As of now, our rides are quiet.

[Update: Setting the squelch to 5 may be necessary for the Walkway, as we both heard a few squawks and bleeps while riding eastbound on a Monday afternoon. ]

I bought a pair of third-party 3800 mA·h batteries for the Baofeng UV-5RE Plus (whatever that means) radios on our bikes. Oddly, the packs carry the same “Model BL-5” identification as 1800 mA·h batteries shipped with the radio:

The obviously mislabeled “Baofeng” battery eliminator also sported a 3800 mA·h label:

I conjured a “test fixture” from a clamp, copper sheet, and copper tape snippets:

Which produced interesting results:

The 250 mA load = 15 hour rate seemed reasonable to simulate radios spending most of their time in power-save mode, but the packs still delivered only 2.8 A·h.

The packs also claim an unnaturally precise 28.12 W·h, but they’re still underperformers at 20 W·h:

Anyhow, I can run the radios for a week without (worrying about) running out of juice during a ride.

Baofeng UV-5 radios can (mostly) eliminate the loud hiss heard at the end of a transmission before the squelch kicks in after the received carrier drops: Menu → 34 STE → ON. A detailed description of the option suggests it’s a 55 Hz subaudible tone sent for 250 milliseconds after the sender releases the PTT and before the transmitter stops sending, with the receiver muting its audio during the tone. Obviously, this requires a Baofend radio at each end of the conversation, which applies to our bikes.

Saying “laaaa” while kerchunking (into a smaller dummy load than the hulk) with STE OFF:

Baofeng – STE OFF – laaaa

Compared to the received audio, the squelch tail hiss is really really loud.

Then with STE ON:

Baofeng – STE ON – laaaa

You can see the STE tone reception start about 250 ms before the audio cuts off, although it’s not at all clear the audio is muted on either end. In any event, there’s no squelch tail worth mentioning, even if there’s an audible tick when the STE tone starts.

Saying nothing with STE ON:

Baofeng – STE ON – silent

It’s unlikely the audio output would include the subaudible tone, but you might convince yourself something happens in the 250 ms between the STE blip near midscreen and the final pop (now clipped) as the audio drops.

All in all, a definite improvement!

Perhaps because we’re using better quality earbuds, the Baofeng UV-5 radios on our bikes produce extremely loud audio, even with the volume knob just above its power-on click. Reducing the volume requires a series resistor downstream of the diodes clipping the pops:

Baofeng Headset Audio Attenuation

The color codes come from previous work.

Because we have different earbuds and different hearing, my radio has a 140 Ω resistor and Mary’s has a 430 Ω resistor. Getting the right value requires a few iterations of on-road testing, but it’s not particularly critical; the volume knob should end up roughly in the middle of its range.

For now, all the “circuitry” lives among layers of Kapton tape:

Baofeng headset wire plate – detail

Speaking of volume knobs, Baofeng radios have large flat-top cylindrical knobs (unlike Wouxun’s fluted knobs), so I added a pointed snippet of reflective tape to make the position visible:

Baofeng volume knob – reflective pointer

The flash lights it up, but there’s enough backlighting behind your (well, my) head to make it easily visible under normal conditions. Once you figure out the proper volume, it’s easy to set the pointer in that direction before every ride.

To the road!