REALLY fix AM on the UV-K5? Plus MORE features?!

Yes we have covered the UV-K5 before, but now that time has passed and the community of firmware tinkers grows, lets try a newer community firmware that says AM reception is improved! ??
LINKS:
How to install firmware: • UPDATE your UV-K5 Firm...
Search List: github.com/top...
Firmware Flasher (load your own): github.com/egz...
Firmware Flasher autoload: egzumer.github...
Menus: github.com/egz...
BUY your K5: amzn.to/41c3wf7
8 in 1 programming cable: amzn.to/3BanD0X
Firmware used this video: github.com/RE3...
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[@yetisuncle666]

i will gladly watch for 17 mins, or more, if i am actually learning something. some of us dummies need to be taken by the hand and walked thru this stuff slowly.

[@K5YVY]

Hey I have to learn slow most the time myself.

[@FirstLast-vr7es]

I just bought a uv-k5(8) and can't get any PC to recognize the usb programming cable. Tried 3 widows PCs and a Linux Mint machine. Nothing. It came with a driver disk, but no PC of mine has an optical drive... Tried installing the Quansheng AND Baofeng programming cable drivers too. No dice... I ordered another cable, thinking maybe I got a bad one. I hope that's the case.. Anybody else had this issue and fixed it?

[@HckrNnms]

You need to push the connector into the radio to the point you think you're about to break it.

[@amarshlomo2788]

K type only....

[@egzi]

2:58 This should be fixed now in v0.20

[@K5YVY]

nice I'll have to look into it.

[@tomperone9338]

I wish the egzumer firmware had the frequency range of the RE3CON firmware.

[@temporarilyoffline]

Its a wonderful in the radio shack, a wonderful day for some radios. Would you be mine? Could be Mine? Won't you be my subscriber? 😍😆😜

[@K5YVY]

I need to create a tune to those lyrics…Creative Commons license?

[@temporarilyoffline]

@@K5YVY share a like brother

[@deesalkelly3069]

brought 6 for monitoring a certain freq/service like ATC or our local Police - AM for a 20 buck radio is excellent

[@K5YVY]

Nice! Yeah for the price they definitely have their uses. Thanks for sharing!

[@DonzLockz]

The AM is supposed to be fixed but its a great fun radio. Im waiting for more goodness to be tapped out of this budget radio.💪🤠

[@K5YVY]

Yep it is fun seeing what all people come up with to add and change about this line of radios. You can’t do this stuff on many others.

[@JamesHannibalKH2SR]

Looks like a fun little HT. I might have to get one. 👍🏽

[@K5YVY]

Hey my Quirkiest Friend! This HT is just that, Fun. Functional well that's debatable. But if you like things that don't cost a lot of money and you enjoy making it do things it wasn't designed for...then this becomes a "FUN" little toy radio to have around.

[@ItsRael108]

Great wee video, great wee fun Chinese rice box 👍🌞📻

[@harefamily1]

I have this radio, and all I get is static on all channels except for FM channels for music, I flashed it and downloaded my local channels using Chirp and I can hear nothing but static, don't know whats up, tried everything

[@K5YVY]

Have you check the squelch? Sounds like it is set to zero or to low.

[@W-733_KWX]

Thanks for sharing; I was hopeful AM Airband receive would be better but my Radtel 470X does a better job even if it's still not perfect, at least it also has a fuller audio.

[@K5YVY]

Thanks, yeah these radios are not purpose built AM receivers, but if a product is going to advertise am receive/air band you would expect it to sound good. There is community firmware out there now that greatly improved the reception on air band, still not perfect but very noticeably better.

[@MikeN2MAK]

My buddy has this radio an dI might ask to borrow it and see of the air band is. We're just a few miles from the airport.

[@K5YVY]

I still believe the hardware is the problem, although these people that create custom firmware can adjust values inside the configuration and clean to the sound of the signal, I’m not sure that it can be completely fixed without different hardware. Some of the air band sounded excellent like FM, others was hard to hear in the white noise or just plain garbled garbage as it seem just just depends on the strength of the signal received. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I do appreciate people putting in efforts to improve it though.

[@HamRadioCrusader]

Great Video Joe, Thank You. I love experimenting with these little radios. 73 KD5FMU

[@K5YVY]

Thanks Freddie, it is satisfying when community brings out the fullest of your little radios 😎

[@bobkopf227]

Joe I hope you and your family had a nice Thanksgiving, we went to Livingston Montana for the week and had a great time

[@K5YVY]

Oh Montana, lot of beautiful places up there from what I’ve seen, never been. All the best to you and yours 👍

[@daytona1212]

I have no trouble with the AM on the airband with the Egzumer MOD. Sounds all okay.

[@K5YVY]

Nice! I kept one of the K5's factory to compare with the modded firmware, and in my last video ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/in3Wmmx9hNOKgtU ) I do some comparisons and you can tell the modded community improved the sound of the AM airband.

[@daytona1212]

@@K5YVY Yep, I can here the difference between the new firmware and the out of the box firmware. 👍

[@radiotec76]

It’s remarkable that SSB transmissions are really good but VHF AM is still almost unintelligible. I was looking at the signal meter for the first transmission and observed a -48 and it was very intelligible. So is that a dBm indicator? The tower was very scratchy and -16 dBm. So is is the signal too strong for the rig’s front end? Likewise with USB on HF the signals read -105 and very intelligible. What would happen if you received VHF air band with a plain old quarter wave instead of the directional Yagi?

[@K5YVY]

It is definitely possible with a lower gain antenna. I was also surprised how well I could hear and understand SSB signals on HF….

[@radiotec76]

@@K5YVY sounds like the radio’s AGC was off and your rig is suffering from front-end overload. Turning off AGC on VHF air band may have been a conscious decision by the programmer to insure maximum gain with weaker signals but when AM signals get to -16 dBm the radio’s front-end seems to be overloading.

[@K5YVY]

@radiotec76 I could definitely agree with that, I’ve also heard of a sensible reason of a chip that attempts to make conversion of the signal to AM and just isn’t the best choice for the job. It was much more technical than that but to much for me to remember at the moment lol.

[@radiotec76]

@@K5YVY I don’t see how a chip that receives SSB, WWV and AM CB so well should have difficulty with AM on VHF air band.

[@K5YVY]

@radiotec76 I’m with you. I’m far from a electrical engineer , but proper AM IC chips aren’t that expensive and I wouldn’t think it would be that much more costly to produce radios that are going to claim air band receive to have those proper IC’s put in them 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@tomcaron9113]

Mode went through great but how do you put it into am? The am fix is on, I’m on my airport channel 118.700 but I can’t find how to get it into am and have the am show on the display? Thanks. PS, can change the band with F-1 but it goes to a higher channel, 138.000.

[@K5YVY]

In the firmware used in this video menu number 13 called Demodu allows you to change modes. You can assign a side button with short or long press as a shortcut to this as well.

[@Al-kw5ii]

I hated mine so bad i literally threw it in the trash. I dont know if their are good ones and bad ones but mine, i could not understand one dam thing coming out of it over the high pitch of the static. and thats even when it would pick something up. baofeng in same room picked up audible signals 75% more often (this radio would not even notice a open channel) than this thing. the squelch did not act like it did anything at all. Yes I said baofeng so what does that tell you about this radio?

[@K5YVY]

Well I definitely do make claims that this is a great radio, it’s definitely not, but for the folks that like to tinker, code programming, and change things up, it’s a fun radio to mess with. Appreciate you leaving a comment 👍.

[@Ross13ful]

The Am is Fixed Now

[@K5YVY]

I'm pleased! I'm editing a video right now showing difference is firmware and brand radios of AM receive :)

[@Ross13ful]

@@K5YVY oh I see well thank you for this video I will look forward to more

[@djdonbentley2141]

Will it ever be possible for a radio like this to input into the computer for discriminator tap or similar. I know most people say no . Anyone know about anything , matched up with special software.

[@K5YVY]

Natively probably not, but there are ways to tap into most these on their boards by soldering a wire to the right circuit. I have not done this but there are guides online on how to do it with baofengs. Special software I’m unsure what you mean.

[@beretta804]

Am I the only one who notices his voice doesn't match his lips?

[@K5YVY]

That was aggravating. I had entirely lost the mic and didn’t realize it, this was the second recording after I finally got it going. You got your moneys worth anyways right? 😎

[@dublinese415]

my battery calibration is all off on this

[@K5YVY]

Hummm I haven’t paid any attention myself to that. I am pretty sure I seen something about battery calibration instructions on one of these radios or firmwares, but not able to look for a little while.

[@allthingsradio_midtnwx]

@k5yvy do you have a video or know of one. Going from new radio to downloading the firmware? I have tried to watch several different videos and can’t seem to unlock mine like this. I want to be able tx and rx like your doing in this video

[@K5YVY]

Have you watched my video on how to update the firmware? Link is in the description of this video.

[@allthingsradio_midtnwx]

@@K5YVY yes sir. I watched it right after this one. I mean a step by step video. I’m new to having s computer so the zip files and pulling from the zip files. Taking the firmware from GitHub and putting it on my radio. That’s all confusing

[@allthingsradio_midtnwx]

@@K5YVY if there isn’t a video. Maybe I can catch you on discord sometime if you don’t mind

[@K5YVY]

@atr_midtnwx @atr_midtnwx understand, we all have to go around that learning curve at some point. In a nutshell, when at the chosen GitHub page, you should see on the right hand side of your screen the word “Releases” circled in green, clicking on that should take you to the files, in this case you are only wanting the single file that ends with .bin , you don’t need the .zip files. Use the online firmware flasher egzumer.github.io/uvtools/ , (must a chrome browser, Firefox don’t work) once there click on the Browse button on the right side. That will bring up your file explorer on your computer and you just need to find the .bin file you downloaded (likely in your downloads folder) once you select the file, click open, and it should leave you with the webpage I had you at. Then with your radio turned OFF, hold PTT button while turning the radio on, your LED on top should be on steady, now connect your programming cable to your radio and computer. On the web page click Flash firmware. It will ask you to select the COM Port your cable is assigned, if the one you pick didn’t work simply try again till one works, Your light on your radio should begin flashing and once it is done your radio will restart with your new firmware🥳. Hope that helps.

[@allthingsradio_midtnwx]

@@K5YVY so you have the flash the radio first? Does that delete all the setting on the radio? Also I have tried this before and I have click the rx 18mhx to 1.3ghz and tried to download that and it didn’t work. Then I tried the same on tx and it didn’t work. Is that because I didn’t hold the ptt button and turn on the radio first?

[@n1kkri]

Can you tell me if TX is working on all bands including 18-54MHz ? I tried a bin that looks identical and TX was disabled when I tried 10m AM

[@K5YVY]

There is firmware that allows transmit in the full spectrum, BUT given the hardware inside the radio it will only transmit FM, and if you did use a firmware that allowed transmit in the extended range, the output power is in the milliwatt scale. So in reality it’s not worth your while to have the ability to transmit milliwatt power fm modulations. The firmware I used in the video disables transmit in extended range.

[@n1kkri]

@@K5YVY Yes that is exactly the firmware I have. I have measured the output power and it is milliwatts but fun to use at a local level or try connecting it to a good antenna and try a little FM on 29.6 MHz

[@K5YVY]

@n1kkri lol I did the same thing with I had one that would Tx. It was fun to have a little 6m and such HT even if I could only reach other radios in my shack😎

[@n1kkri]

@@K5YVY When I was a kid I modified a 49MHz Lafayette Radio walkie talkie to 6m The power was 100mW. I lived in a 3 story house and one day I went to the attic, open the skylight window and climbed out on the roof. I was on 50.6MHz and worked a few Hams that had to be 2-3 miles away. I did the same thing with a Radio Shack Archer Space Partrol CB channel 14 walkie talkie accept I connected a piece of wire from the 1st floor to the 3rd floor Window. I spoke to people a couple miles away as well as some of my friends who lived about a half mile away with the same radio with theirs only having the whip. It was a blast.

[@K5YVY]

@n1kkri oh yeah, the days.