TP-5: An Introduction through the programmer

An introduction the Baofeng TP-5 radio.  See it done then come back to read the transcript if you don't catch all the details the first time. Baofeng TP-5: An Introduction

Hi, it's Karin with RT Systems, and let's learn a little about the Baofeng TP5 through the Programmer.  Once you've installed the RT Systems Programmer, the first thing you do with any radio, the first time out, is Communications |  Get Data From Radio. It may warn you that it's going to overwrite the file.

It's then your decision. Have you been working in the file and you don't want to lose things? Or, does it really matter because this is just a trash file anyway? If it doesn't matter, tell it yes, you want to continue. And the instructions come up telling you what to do. To insert the cable into the speaker mic jack on the side.

And when it comes to the cable for this radio, that's the only place it's going to fit. Turn the radio on.  And you may find that strange, but as ham radio operators, we all know that we plug and unplug things with the radio off. So now is the time to turn it on.  And we click OK to start. 

And it's reading the radio.  More important than frequencies it's going to get from the radio if your radio is pre programmed, is background information. If the radio has been modified, what part of the world it came from, for these Baofeng radios, what frequency range it covers, and other details that only the radio can tell us. 

So now, this is what's in the radio. I can keep it or not and I'm going to choose to not keep it by  creating a new file. And if I've been given a list,  I can type them in,  give it a name,  and that's five characters. And I was just testing this one takes seven characters. Plenty for a call sign, but not much if I wanted to put a city name in there.

CTCSS, notice I can't change this  until I turn on a tone mode,  and then I can pick the tone that I'm given on the list. 

If I have another one.  Same thing.  And see, spaces are even allowed.  Won't let you type beyond what you have. And this one's a DCS. And see, now only the DCS columns are active. And I picked my values from there. 

440. Notice it's doing the pluses and minuses for me. That sure does make it easy when I don't have to do the calculations.  But let's make it even easier.  Let's go File,  External Data,  I have Radio Reference, which is more commercial but requires a subscription.  Repeater Book, which is amateur and is free.  R Finder, which does require a subscription and it's amateur repeaters.

It does have a really nice route design search in it. Frequency lists, built right into the program, give you your weather channels, FRS, GMRS, and others, so you don't have to go find them.  But even easier, let's look at RepeaterBook. 

I'm in LaGrange, Georgia, I travel around about 50 miles, and I'm going to tell it OK.  Wow, this is quite a list. But this is not a programming file. This is just a data return so I can do some other things to it.  Down here at the bottom I'm going to set name to none because I have a choice of setting it to call sign.

That's the only thing that's going to fit. reasonably,  and I don't want to look at the call signs, I'm going to look at the frequencies. I'm going to leave City in comment because it's great information to have as part of the file.  But then I'm going to pull this Selected Bands, and I'm going to take out P25, DSTAR, and DMR, without having to hunt for them in the list  because my radio can't do those and they would be noisy if I landed on that channel. I'm going to leave Yaesu Fusion because most of those repeaters also do FM.  One more thing,  right over here, this distance column, I've come to the top at the right,  I'm going to click on that. 

Now, I have my close first, and I go out from there,  create file.  This is a programming file. ready to go, ready to set up the radio, but if I want this as a part of my original file,  I highlight them  by clicking on the channel number and scrolling down,  and then I click copy,  and go back to my  file that I was building, and click paste. 

And there they are. They have joined the two that I put in originally. Now I'm ready to check the settings. These are background settings on the radio that you set up only once.  And I want to double check that I'm on channel and frequency so I can see those frequencies since I only have a couple of names in this file.

I want to set my backlight to off because I want my battery to last as long as it can.  And other things here I might want to customize. Turn the voice off.  And other details.  I Close | Apply changes and close. 

File. Save as: this is computer after all. You'd hate to lose all that work you did.  And now communications and send data to radio. And at this point it does not matter, I have several tabs open.  The one that is active, the one that is on top,  is the one that's going to be sent to the radio.  So it tells me to insert the cable into the speaker mic jack, turn the radio on, because the radio was off when I inserted the cable.  and click OK.

As long as nobody says they're unhappy, which includes the radio or the programmer,  everything transferred as we expected it to. 

So enjoy your radio,  I hope this helps,  and remember,  if you think you can,  or you think you can't,  you're right.  Seventy threes!