Programming a Baofeng with CHIRP

So you just got your amateur radio license and bought yourself a Baofeng radio. Well, I’ve got some bad news for ya. Programming a Baofeng isn’t exactly straight forward and the documentation for these radios is notoriously bad. But lucky for you, there are some great folks who put together an excellent open-source tool called CHIRP that will make programming your radio a heck of a lot easier.

DISCLAIMER: As always when doing anything fun, there are risks involved. It is possible (although very unlikely) that you will render your radio inoperable. Proceed at your own risk. But you should be OK. Maybe.

SECOND DISCLAIMER: This write up is geared toward the folks in the good ol’ US of A. If you live in a different country, the laws may be different regarding which frequencies you can use so you may have to do a little more research and tweak the stock config below accordingly.

Goals

What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?

  1. Fix some default settings so that your radio isn’t annoying to you and everybody around you

  2. Program in the national calling frequencies for 2m and 70cm

  3. Program in the National Weather Radio frequencies (great to have on the trail)

  4. Program in FRS, GMRS (including basic repeater configurations and the Midland “Extra Channels”), and MURS for monitoring and/or emergency purposes

NOTE: I do recommend that you buy the right radio for the job.

E.g., if you plan to only talk on GMRS you are probably better off buying a GMRS radio that is designed to operate on GMRS frequencies. I highly recommend the Midland GXT1000VP4 for handheld GMRS. I have several and have had them in dust, rain, hail, and have dropped them countless times but they still work perfectly. The Midland MXT275 is a nice mobile unit.

Requirements

  1. The first thing you need is a programming cable. Make sure you get a genuine BTECH PC03 FTDI programming cable! There have been issues with counterfeit chipsets being used in the cheaper cables. If you want, you can read more about that here.

  2. Head on over to CHIRP’s downloads page and get the latest daily build. While that’s downloading, read the Beginner’s Guide so you have an idea about what you’re doing.

  3. Download the Super Awesome CHIRP Radio Image that I created from my Baofeng BF-F8HP (which is running firmware version N5R-340B).

Procedure

  1. I recommend doing a factory reset on the radio. This will obviously wipe out whatever you have on the radio already, so skip this step if there’s something you are trying to preserve.

    1. Turn on the radio

    2. Press MENU

    3. Use the UP/DOWN keys to select RESET

    4. Press MENU again

    5. Use the UP/DOWN keys to select ALL

    6. Press MENU again and the radio will display SOURCE?

    7. Press MENU once more to confirm

  2. Next, follow the instructions to “Download from Radio” in CHIRP which will create a new tab that is compatible with your radio model/firmware combination.

  3. The factory reset may have some pre-programmed frequencies that we want to get rid of. Erase all of the channels by pressing CTRL+A to select all of them and then press DELETE to clear them.

  4. WARNING: This is very important: never attempt to cross-load a CHIRP .img file between different models or between the same models with different firmware versions. You can, however, safely import frequencies from another .img file.

    Go to File -> Import and select the .img file that you downloaded above. Feel free to make any changes you want to the channel layout but I feel pretty darn good about how I configured them already.

  5. OPTIONAL (but highly recommended): a lot of the default settings are crap. I strongly urge you to also make the following changes. To do this in CHIRP, click on the “Settings” tab on the left side and adjust the following:

    1. Basic Settings

      1. Carrier Squelch Level - 5

      2. Beep - uncheck this box

      3. Display Mode (A) - Name

      4. Display Mode (B) - Name

    2. Advanced Settings

      1. Voice - OFF

      2. Squelch Tail Eliminate (HT to HT) - uncheck this box

      3. Squelch Tail Eliminate (repeater) - OFF

      4. STE Repeater Delay - OFF

    3. Other Settings

      1. VHF Lower Limit (MHz) - 144

      2. VHF Upper Limit (MHz) - 148

      3. UHF Lower Limit (MHz) - 420

      4. UHF Higher Limit (MHz) - 450

    4. Work Mode Settings

      1. VFO/MR Mode - Channel

      2. MR A Channel - 0

      3. MR B Channel - 1

      4. VFO A Frequency - 146.520

      5. VFO B Frequency - 446.000

      6. VFO A Tuning Step - 2.5

      7. VFO B Tuning Step - 2.5

  6. Lastly, follow the instructions to upload the changes back to the radio.

For more detailed information about what each setting does, refer to this page.

Summary

Congrats! If all went well you now have a decent starting configuration for your radio. The next logical step would be to find some local repeaters and program those in using CHIRP. A good resource is RepeaterBook, although you will have to forgive them for the 1990s web site design. Unfortunately, that seems to be a common theme among amateur radio websites …

In addition, please do your due diligence and research the band plans in your area. Just because you can tune to a specific frequency doesn’t mean that you should. A simple search with “<Your location> band plan” should yield some results that give you a list of simplex frequencies that you can use. I say this because a very popular frequency to use “off-road” is 146.460. However, in some areas (such as Southern California), this frequency is reserved for other purposes. Here is an example band plan for the 2m band in Southern California: TASMA 2m Band Plan.

I hope this was helpful. Cheers!