Railfan Technology > Radio review report

I have not updated my radio testing reviews for a couple of months or more—mostly because I haven’t had much positive to report.  In this interim I have tested several of the low- to mid-priced “Chinese” radios.  The performance of all of them, with one exception, has been markedly substandard.  More about that exception in a minute.  As it stands, the Quansheng UV-K5(8) (and its numerous essentially identical brand-name and model variants) is still the low-priced winner in the railfan portable radio market.  Especially when the aftermarket (but free) Egzumer 0.22 or related “NuNu” firmware is loaded into the radio, the UV-K5(8) has flat-out the best overall performance in the low-price market and will, in fact, outperform many amateur and commercial portable radios costing hundreds of dollars more.  Its performance is so good that my Uniden BC-125AT and BCD-160DN scanners have sat in my radio drawer with the batteries removed for months now.
 
So, about the “exception” radio that I tested.  It is the BTech BF-F8HP Pro radio.  BTech is a South Dakota company that imports Bao Feng radios from China that have been built and/or modified to BTech’s specs.  Unlike most of the Chinese radio companies, BTech actually has very decent U.S.-based customer support that is both responsive and knowledgeable.  When I e-mailed them a technical question, they responded to me within a few hours.  BTech also provides periodic firmware updates to the BF-F8HP Pro.  Overall, the BF-F8HP Pro is a fairly decent radio, priced at about $60.  Unfortunately, its weak spot is its poor weak signal reception.  It is not awful, but the Quansheng UV-K5(8) will run circles around it, and costs about one-third as much.  As such, I can’t put the BF-F8HP Pro on my recommended list.  That’s too bad, because the BF-F8HP Pro has 999 memory channels, a decent keyboard and display, good audio, and is relatively logical to operate.  BTech says that there is a firmware update coming at some point to address a couple of small issues with the radio.  I hope that the firmware update might address its lack of weak signal reception, but that may be a hardware issue that can’t be fixed.
 
I will briefly mention one other radio that I’ve reviewed before—the Tidradio TD-H3.  This radio is also not on my recommended list because of several shortcomings in its “out-of-the-box” form.  That said, there is a free aftermarket firmware update from “nicsure” that actually cures many of the TD-H3’s deficiencies and turns it into a darned good railfanning radio.  Unfortunately, the firmware is hard to find and often hard to install, even for experienced radio users.  It also has a “deal-killer” bug in the nicsure firmware that will allow the user to inadvertently and unknowingly alter the frequency of a memory channel while one is adding or deleting a memory channel from the scan list.  If and when those firmware deficiencies are cured, this radio might approach the desirability of the Quansheng UV-K5(8).  Until then, I don’t recommend the TD-H3, notwithstanding some of the accolades that it gets from the amateur radio community.
 
As always, I will try to answer questions.  At this time, I have no current plans for further radio reviews, unless some new and interesting products come down the pipeline. 
 

Has anyone tested the Wouxon KG-Q10H for railband reception?
I've read and seen several good operating reports online, but can't find specifications for sensitivity.
KK6EL
Redding, CA

I have not tested the Wouxun KG-Q10H.  That said, the Wouxun radios that I have tested that are supertheterodyne receiver radios (this one is) have performed pretty well.  The average railfan likely does not need a quad-band radio, but if one is a ham and wants those bands and a radio to use for railfanning, this one might be OK.  With a $220 price, though, one is paying for those extra bands that one might not need. I've been intrigued for awhile by the Wouxun KG-UV9PX radio from bettersaferadio.com--it's somewhat less expensive than the KG-Q10H, but is a dual-band radio.  It also can be bought pre-programmed with the original 97 AAR channels already programmed into the radio. It's on my list for a future test, but right now I don't need another railfan radio, so that may be a ways off in the future.

Rather than start a new thread, I'll just tag along on this one. I just had to, suddenly, get rid of my old Dodge truck and get another vehicle. The Dodge had a mobile scanner wired in but I'm not going to have that luxury now. So, rather than go through all the effort to find someone to wire it up in the new vehicle, I'm looking for opinions on the best hand-held radio scanner that I can take along. The more user-freindly in the technology department, the better, as I'm not very tech savy. Thanks in advance for any assistance!

NO portable radio will perform as well as a mobile radio with an externally mounted antenna unless that portable radio is, itself, attached to an external antenna.  Period.  The vehicle body acts as a partial Faraday cage shielding the vehicle interior from radio signals and the portable radio's antenna, even a pretty efficient one, is not as good as an exterior antenna.  The best solution is to get good quality mobile scanner or radio, and properly wire a power supply and a permanent external antenna for it.  Then use your portable radio for when you are away from the vehicle.  That's the way I've done it for over 30 years now.  As far as a portable scanner, in scanners the Uniden BC-125AT--even with its shortcomings--is about that best one out there right now.  That said, for raifanning purposes, a $30 Quansheng UV-K5(8) Chinese two-way radio, properly programmed, will outperform it.  My BC-125AT has languished for months in my radio drawer with the batteries pulled out of it--I carry the Quansheng most of time as my portable railfan radio, unless I'm carrying my commercial VHF Icom IC-F3161DT or Kenwood NX-200 radio, but they lack UHF for monitoring train telemetry.

Thank you for the reply.

Posted from iPhone

What Antenna do you recommend for the Quansheng?

dhb Wrote:
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> What Antenna do you recommend for the Quansheng?

The one that comes with the Quansheng UV-K5(8) is an extremely good antenna.  It performs better than a lot of aftermarket antennas.  I even use that antenna on some other radios.  About the only way to get it, though, is to buy the Quensheng radio.

Thanks. Trying to get the radio and chirp to communicate to one another on my Apple computer.