After reading on G4ILO’s blog about the Baofeng UV-3R, I thought I’d order one to give it ago as I only had a 2m VX-150 plus the UV-3R looked a lot lighter and something I might be more inclined to carry around so on the 16 May I ordered one from radio-factory on ebay and on the 24th of May it arrived in the post good result considering if came from Hong Kong!

After giving it a charge which took 4 hours, It was time for me to head off to the eye hospital for a vision test handy as it also gave me the chance to take the UV3-R with me and agreed to have a 2m QSO with Dad when I arrived, which we did using 1 watt from the hand held I was easily heard by Dad (M3JFM) at home using the IC-910H plus 2m beam pointing in the direction of the hospital and of course he was end stopping!

Later that day I managed to figure out how to send 1750hz tone (not how the manual says!) and get repeater shifts and the like setup, during a test later on in the week I tried it with the hands free ear piece and the audio I’m told is much better using that so might do some further tests and recordings to see what the actual difference is!

Overall good buy for the money considering it covers 2m/70cms FM and weighs nothing!