THIS TRANSCEIVER IS OFFERED ONLY FOR EXPERIMENTATION BY RF TECHNICIANS, RF ENGINEERS AND AMATEUR RADIO LICENSEE'S
This is NOT a general purpose UHF CB portable transceiver and in normal circumstances never can be ... it is not designed to operate at the correct frequencies, even when re-programmed.
It is however suitable for use as a fixed channel receiver (transmit disabled) across 16 channels with optional scanning, covering wide range of UHF frequencies (400~470Mhz) or as a full portable transceiver on the Amateur frequency band called 70cm (if the user holds an Australian Amateur Licence), or general experimentation as a workbench general UHF receiver only or an RF signal source (transmit into a shielded dummy load)
Come on in! ... let me tell you all about these transceivers
HISTORY:
In a previous life (it seems like so long ago now) I was heavily involved in professional communications (Maritime) and on a personal level, Amateur radio (ex VK2DWF - I relinquished the licence many moons ago due to non-use, with my time preoccupied in general pro audio electronics)
Of course this means I collected radio equipment, lots of it! I do not collect RF gear any longer but some friends seem to find "things" that they feel may interest me and I end up with all sorts of weird and wonderful bits of radio equipment.
This is one of my more recent "acquisitions", actually I would guess it was about 10 years ago!
The BF-888S transceivers "look" good, feel good but until they are reprogrammed and used by certain groups of people with appropriate licencing plus endowed with specialised RF knowledge and test equipment, they are absolutely ILLEGAL for "general" radio communications use in Australia. If you are located outside of Australia, this situation may be different but you will need to do some research locally regarding this.
The reasons that they are not legal is twofold ...
- They come from the factory preprogrammed with 16 transmit frequencies which have the potential to cause harmful interference to commercial and emergency services.
- They have NO RCM or TICK of approval for use in Australia (the same doubtlessly applies to NZ) which means they have not been technically checked to ensure they do not transmit spurious signals on frequencies other than the primary transmit frequency and also ensuring they are generally safe to use.
Primarily for these reasons, it is absolutely not permitted to use these transceivers with their ORIGINAL pre-programmed transmit frequencies - to do so could possibly cause interference to legitimate users such as emergency services.
Do not mistake these for dicky little UHF CB transceivers, they are not. They are not even designed to transmit up in the 476Mhz frequencies allocated for UHF CB use.
Please go to this link and READ IT
If you have read and understood the above, let's move on and I will tell you a lot more about these transceivers (by the way ... take a look at the ads for these on Fleabay, most sellers offer these illegal (in Australia) transcievers as a "pair" which appears to suggest they are fine for general purpose communications use in Australia (they are NOT) and the sellers even appear to have no idea what they are selling!)
BAOFENG - UHF Portable Transceiver (with accessories)
Model: BF-888S
Complete kit of ONE transceiver comprising:
BF-888S portable transceiver
Removeable "rubber duckie" antenna
Li-Ion battery pack for the transceiver
Li-Ion battery charger for the above
Earplug & microphone for private portable use
Belt clip
Detachable wrist strap
These BF-888S transceivers are small and light, with a nice 'feeling' (lightweight) when held in the hand or clipped onto your belt.
With the above there is NO outer box (although it will be well packaged) and NO user manual
Why?
Because I received these units in a box of two but to offer the greatest flexibility to those who wish to have one of these, I am basically supply a "part box"
If however someone purchases two transceivers then the pair will be supplied in the original manufacturers packaging (cardboard box) along with the user manual
FEATURES:
Frequency range 400Mhz ~ 470Mhz
16 Fixed channel capability
Scanning across the programmed channels
Standard F3E which is standard FM Speech (analog) but there is no prefix mentioned which indicates the bandwidth, I suspect this is 11K2
Spacing between programmed channels is 25KHz
Fully programmable using a 'standard' PC and programming USB interconnect cable which plugs into the side of the BF-888S - no other extras, no RIB's required.
This transceiver has a number of "tricks" built into the design ...
It talks to you! When you turn on the transceiver it confirms with a very machine like voice "Power On" and as you change channels, the transceiver will speak the channel number selected and in a language of your choice. You can disable this facility of course.
VOX - tired of pushing the PTT all the time? This transceiver can be setup so that it is voice activated (or any sound for activation for that matter) transmission.
Battery low alert - tone and LED indicate that the battery needs charging
Monitor - open or closes the Squelch (the channel receive audio is unmuted)
Emergency alarm function - I followed the instructions in the manual but could not work out how to turn this function on or actually understand the intended purpose - experiment with this one if it is considered important!
Busy Channel lockout - if set, when the selected channel is in use by other users, you cannot transmit.
CTSCC - sub audible tones can be set and then will be sent with every transmission and the transceiver will only receive radio communications from other transceivers which are using the same CTCSS tones. This is not a true privacy facility, there is no scrambling or encryption of the transmitted signal but it does mean you don't need to listen to every single conversation on the channel.
Amazingly, this transceiver is also a flashlight (bit like a mobile phone light) The instructions on use are not so clear in the manual but if you have the transceiver turned ON, then push the F button - on comes the bright White LED light. Push F again and it flashes, like a beacon I guess.
SPECIAL NOTES:
Being a Chinese manufactured product, something went amiss with the cardboard box text and translation to English ....
The box states ...
There is a scrambler - there is not! I think "they" mean CTCSS sub audible tones. There is no signal encryption of any kind, not even the old audio frequency inversion systems - this is just a stock standard analog transceiver. If you are looking to monitor trunked systems, this transceiver will not suit you and as for APCO P25 - forget it (and the most common users of that digital system use rolling encryption in any case!)
Now let's go down to some technical information ... the information that follows relates to ALL of the transceivers I have here, it is quite likely that also ALL of these models from other sources (such as the units on Fleabay) initially have the same frequencies programmed into them upon receipt by the buyer.
Never use these transceivers with the factory pre-programmed frequencies!
The basic technical specifications (from the manufacturer) are shown in one of the photographs.
Take the useable distance (stated as 6Km) with a "grain of salt", this is such a "consumer-end user" term because the useable distance depends upon so many factors, particularly the terrain and environment the equipment is used in. For example, from within an RF shielded room you would be lucky to be able to send/receive 1 metre let alone 6Km! Of course though, the distance of normal-useable operation is quite low, this transceiver has only 3W RF output after all but some enhancement could be achieved by using a high gain, suitably mounted external antenna such as a Yagi.
The transceiver is designed to operate across the wide frequency range 400Mhz ~ 470Mhz
The specific original factory pre-programmed frequency information is showing in one of the photographs, this was downloaded via the programming software prior to my reprogramming each and every transceiver.
Immediately after confirming the RX/TX frequencies these unit(s) are factory pre-programmed for, I have completely erased the factory frequency settings and instead I have programmed into the transceiver some amateur repeater output frequencies NOT the input repeater (transceiver transmit) frequencies. This means that if you are in Sydney then at least you should be able to receive at least one repeater but you will not be able to transmit.
If those reprogrammed frequencies do not suit you, just reprogram the transceiver youself - it is easy to setup and use ... read more below
Upon receipt from me, these transceivers will have ONLY 10 Amateur 70cm repeater receive frequencies programmed into them and no transmit frequencies at all - they will only receive and not transmit to each other or any other receive equipment until reprogrammed.
I keep repeating this information because some people don't read or understand ... don't come crying that this transceiver does not transmit or "talk" to another transceiver - this is entirely intentional
What the purchaser does with the equipment (reprogramming) is entirely up to them!
To program them is easy and not expensive, just connect the programming cable to the transceiver and a PC, run the supplied software and setup your frequencies. Send the data to your transceiver via the USB cable and job done! EASY
Well, there is a bit more to it than that, depending upon your PC. I use an old machine for radio programming and it runs various OS systems, in this case I ran using Win 7
At first I had a comms problem, the cable was not recognised by the PC - I needed to instal the driver. Once I had done that, all was now fine.
NOTE: the transceiver plug wasn't a great fit, you need to push quite hard to mate the plug with the transceiver socket.
I didn't like the software that came on the mini CD-R and used another version I found online - works a treat! Look at the photographs to see screen shots of the software in use.
The programming cable and software is NOT supplied with this transceiver but it can be purchased HERE
Frequency information and other details ...
As I have said above, these did arrive with me having all 16 channels factory programmed.
All channels were pre-programmed as simplex i.e TX and RX were the same
To view the complete ORIGINAL frequency & option programming, take a look at the last photograph I have supplied
RF power output confirmed at 2.8W @ 70cm (into a 50 Ohm dummy load)
To see the original factory programmed frequencies and options, take a look at the 2nd to last photograph which I have provided.
NOTE! For all of the above legality reasons above I have completely removed the original factory programming ... the transceiver has been reprogrammed with just 10 Amateur Radio 70cm repeater channel OUTPUTS - no inputs, in other words there is no transmit data information held by the transceiver - the transceiver CANNOT AND WILL NOT TRANSMIT currently.
All transceivers that I have will be supplied in this manner, all original factory pre-programmed frequency information has been completely erased
Take a look at one of the photographs to see exactly how the transceiver has been programmed by me - RX only with no TX information at all
Some more information about programming the transceiver ...
There is a check box for SCRAMBLE but this appears to do nothing at all to the signal. I think this relates to another Baofeng model.
The same for the FM checkbox, I do not believe this transceiver has the ability to receive commercial FM stations. In any case, checking the box made absolutely no difference.
The software is a bit 'dumb' in that it fires off the data to the transceiver but doesn't check the model number. So you can setup for say the UHF CB frequencies and fire them across to the transceiver but the transceiver does not receive nor transmit on those programmed frequencies as they are out of the design range - I checked and there is absolutely no RF output up in the UHF 476MHz region.
Programming is fast and seems to be reliable, my biggest worry was creating a 'dead brick' but it never happened, even if I accidently disconnected the transceiver during the data transfer!
I also noticed that if a channel has no programmed frequencies (both RX & TX) that it will greet you with a continous tone when that channel is selected by the rotary switch - it just means the data for that channel is empty.
The antenna connection is a SMA MALE connector. If you wished to greatly extend the receive (or transmit) capabilities of the transceiver, it would be a good idea to find an adapter to suit the cable connector you might be using ... most often this is a BNC type.
I did this with the 70cm Amateur repeaters and using an external antenna made a world of difference to what I could hear.
I do have some SMA Female connectors with short 12cm pigtails but you would need to fit your own choice of connector to the bare end of the cable. You can find whatever SMA female connectors I currently have available but looking HERE
TESTING:
Every BF-888S I am offering has been individually tested on both receive and transmit (into a dummy load)
I have programmed the transceiver to talk in English (the default is Chinese)
I have also recharged the battery to ensure the associated battery charger works correctly. Front LED is Red while charging and then goes Green when fully charged.
Actually it is quite easy to externally test the battery as the terminals are exposed at the rear. My testing showed they were 3.7V with no load and dropped to 3.6 when under full TX load (about 1.2A)
I have checked the audio from each transceiver, it is at a good level (actually it can be 'turned up" very loud!) and clean, crisp transmitted audio (while running the transceiver into a dummy load I had a 'leaky' T connector so I could use another of the transceivers to monitor the transmitted audio.
Activating scanning causes the right hand Green LED to flash but unfortunately I cannot seem to set the scan speed across the programmed channels, although I admit I have the transceiver programmed to 'listen' for a carrier and not time based scanning.
I found the need to program the squelch level from the software to be annoying, it would have been better to adjust the squelch level at the transceiver controls - you can adjust it but only from the software.
I have NOT tested the portable earphone/microphone lead
Once testing of each component has been made and the factory programming removed and then reprogrammed for receive only functions, I have packed each component back into the original clear plastic packets they came supplied it, sealed the packets and included is a printed note regarding the programming changes.
