I have been the owner of a lot of radio equipment over the years. One of my favourite “Don;t care if i lose it” radio’s has to the the old faithful Baofeng UV-R5. I keep one in my car for emergency use alongside my Yaesu FTM-6000. It is handy if i need to venture away from the car whilst someone is still inside (kids, the other half etc)
I also happen to own the UV-13Pro and others. All of the Baofengs i have, have been programmed up with CHIRP with no ill side effects. I have yet to have any issues using CHIRP no matter what some people say about it “Bricking” their radio’s.
Personally i think that half the issues arise from others not really knowing how to use a CPS.
The first thing i do is ALWAYS Read the Radio and save the factory defaults just in case. There is an argument that this is not required, however, over the years i have seen others read a radio then change the radio to a different brand expecting the programming to just work. You often get different memory maps and writing the wrong bits to the wrong memory location is a potential disaster.
Always READ the radio first. Save the Codeplug information first before you do anything! This will ensure that any service data areas are saved and can often be used to save a brick. Not all the time but often.
I have yet to have a Radio fail due to programming.
If you are feeling brave, you can of course obtain the Firmware file from the manufacturer and burn it yourself with the EEPROM off the board. This is not for the faint of heart nor some pillock that has no idea of what a nibble and a byte is. If you are out of your depth, go find someone that knows.
I will have a lot more to add here over the next few days. Feel free to leave a comment if you want.
