[Scan-DC] Wouxon Malware

[Watson, Chuck]

Hello:

I have a Wouxon dual band 2M/440 hand held. Be very careful with the little CD that comes with the radio.  I have read that downloading the CD's drivers required to connect the radio to your PC may load malware and the drivers are counterfeit.  Not sure but I thought I ought to pass it on. 

The radio has some "quirks".  For example you can only set the squelch using menu settings (4 choices).  I threw away the supplied antenna and replaced it with a Diamond HT.

--Regards,
Charles Watson, EdD
K4NMO
MITRE
O: 703.983.9642 | M: 571.318.7159
cbwatson at mitre.org 

-----Original Message-----
From: scan-dc-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:scan-dc-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Clegg, Andrew W.
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2013 8:16 AM
To: Scan-DC at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Scan-DC] Cheap Chinese radio/HT

Hi all,

If you're a ham, you're probably already aware of the cheap Chinese HTs (walkie talkies) made by Wouxon and Baofeng. I just bought a Baofeng UV 5RA this week, for $42 including desktop charger, low-quality earpiece/mic, and free shipping from Amazon. The Baofeng transmits and receives in the 136-174 and 400-480 MHz bands, and receives WFM at 68-108 MHz, so it can be used for 2m/440 ham radio, FRS, GMRS, and MURS, and anything else in those frequency ranges, plus (extended) FM broadcast listening. Technically, it's actually only certified for public safety and industrial/business pool frequencies (FCC Part 90), and it's probably legal for ham use (Part 97). It's not certified for FRS/GMRS/MURS (Part 95), but it certainly transmits/receives on those frequencies. Power output is 5 or 1 W. FCC ID is ZP5BF-5R for those who want to look at the certification documents.

For non-hams, the Baofeng is a passable receiver for casual hobby listening. It has CTCSS and DCS capability, and can be put in scan mode, although it scans very slowly. It would be best for monitoring a small number (~1-5) channels. You definitely wouldn't want to scan 100 channels with it, because that would take forever. It can be programmed with up to 128 channels. Reception is analog only, and it definitely doesn't do anything fancy like trunking or baking brownies.

Just a warning - the Baofeng is virtually impossible to program from the front panel (actually, that's by design, since its FCC certification says it is not supposed to be user programmable). If you get one, I recommend spending $8.29 more and getting the USB programming cable. There's a good free software package called Chirp that can be used to program these radios and many other ham radios. I've installed the programming cable driver and Chirp on Windows 7, and they work fine.

My first impressions are that the Baofeng is built reasonably well, has good strong audio, and the reception quality is not too bad. From my heavy RF environment in Arlington, the radio seems to handle overload reasonably well. The downsides are that it uses a reverse SMA connector for the antenna (as if regular SMA wasn't bad enough), the earphone jack is sub-mini instead of mini, and the scan speed is very slow (maybe 4 or 5 channels per second). I don't yet have extensive experience with mine. I'll check back in a few weeks and let you know how it's holding up.

I thought some on this list might be interested.

Cheers,
Andy


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