The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Sometimes A Cheap Date Can Be Fun

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

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Welcome back to Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Ravale. Andrew, Nick, are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matterfax podcast. I'm Phil. That's Nick or that's Nick.

I can never remember when I... One of these. When I inverted my camera. It doesn't matter, though. One of these are Nick. This is the Matter of Facts podcast. We have been challenged to make the show cut off at less than an hour. Well, I was not bribed by the patrons to rig the betting pool properly to force you to go over an hour.

Yes, but we also never specified it had to be the next show. So, like, we could cut off in 59 minutes this time and go over an hour next time and we both win. True. True. See, it's all in the small print. But the people that are poking fun at us right now are the patrons, and they're always promoting bad decisions and usually ridiculing me because we're very long-winded and we can't seem to make an hour show actually take an hour.

But, you know, it's all in good fun. I enjoy it. Yep. And you should also buy a shirt or a coozy or something from the Southern Gals. It supports small business, supports us. And one of these days, Nick and I will actually, like, not be drowning in work. And we will put some time towards revamping the merch line. Yeah.

I know, I know Granby Community College Welding program is, like, definitely going to be a thing. Yes. We did have some interesting, we did have some interesting Warhammer 40K stuff about the Omnisiah and all that. But then you pointed out that there was extremely litigious. There's one thing the game's workshop loves. It's their money and protecting it. Yeah, we might have to wave off of that. I'm sure we could find a legally distinct knockoff.

I mean, Adeptus Ridiculous manages it pretty well. They sell merch. True, true. Of course, they make it all really horny in a creepy way sometimes. Gilrabbers reminding me 59 minutes. Actually, it's 58 minutes because it's 732. Oh, no. She's keeping count, though.

And last but not least, you can prevent war crimes or event new war crimes with disaster coffee. Use code MOF at checkout, save a couple percent. It's good for you. Now, Phil cannot lecture you if you subscribe to regular shipments because it's a different discount code. So I will admit, I may or may not have jumped next to. ass twice now.

Because he didn't use the promo code, but it's because he set up a recurring subscription. Yep. And we can't do a discount with a subscription and allow more discounts because then we're giving him coffee. Correct. I mean, he wouldn't mind,

but the company would become insolvent very quickly, and then nobody would get coffee. Mostly because I would just increase the volume of coffee over the pot of day I already drink. Okay. So it would be a race to our poverty and your heart attack correct yes well that's why we don't allow mixing and matching of you know out the discount code and the subscription service it's really for your benefit it's for my health you know above all yeah

all right so the topic is sometimes a cheap date can be fun nick got a new that he can that he can that he cannot show us on the stream because youtube is dumb and i did not remember to take a picture But I bet you most people in here have seen a Ruger 1022. Mine's a little different. I didn't tactical timid me it. I didn't build it from scratch. I bought it from a guy who built it from scratch. So, Bill, I showed it to you earlier.

Nice dark walnut boyd stock. One inch heavy profile barrel. Accurized trigger package. Phenomenal shooting little gun. It is a cheap date because 1022, shooting 22s, you can do an awful lot of long range target practice and training with that. It's going to be a lot of fun. The new range I belong to, I believe has a 22 league. So we're going to see if I can't sneak in there between work and what are probably inevitable more renovations to my house that I am rapidly approaching.

Yeah, I mean, sooner or later, it's going to happen. I will say that like we've had this conversation about how I was never a big 22 LR guy years ago. I will admit as I've begun to shoot them a bit more, I'm starting to understand the appeal. And it's not really, it's not really cost for me. It's the fact that let's let's all be mature about it for a second. Shooting does get fatiguing after a while. It absolutely can. Depending on what you're shooting and what your tolerances is,

is how fast you get fatigued, but it does fatigue you over time. Like, when I go out to the range and I'm practicing with my 14.5 ounce J frame, my tolerance is about 50 rounds. And at that point, that tiny little snub nose barrel, the concussion from the 38 special, the solid aluminum backstrap smacking me in the web of the hand, like, you reach a point very quickly where it's like, this is no longer fun. Well, but even, but here's the thing of it. From a training perspective, it's not fun.

you push past. But then you reach a point where it's like, okay, I am no longer training because I am flinching because my hand hurts. Yeah, you're no longer effectively training. And, you know, I, that's one of the big reasons why I decided to part with my 300 Linn mag. The two, well, one of the bigger, bigger reasons, I should say. The biggest reason being I don't, even with this new range that has an occasional

availability of 500 yards, that's not stretching the legs of the cartridge. There is no game in this portion of the country that I can't hunt with my 30-aut 6 or my 12-gauge. So wait a second. If you get rid of your 300-win mag, what are you going to do with the Nick box? Well, you see, I realize- You are the only person I know of that shoots Magnum, right? You know what? Screw it.

Rag was going to get it if you don't. Well, you see, I was thinking to myself, I have a long-action Remington 30-od-6 right now. and 25-0.6 does like Magnum Rifle Primers and Magnum loads. 25-od-6. Yeah. It's like, I would have to look and is it, was it ever Sammy certified or is that total wildcats? It was not. It's one of those total wildcats. I'm fairly certain it's not Sammy-certified. I mean, I have not gotten rid of the 300. I don't know. I go back and forth on it all the time.

Well, you got to make a decision by the summer. I will. I'll make a decision before you have to choose who you're giving it to. Well, I mean, it's yours if you want it. I'm just saying like Raggle has already given me hell about why I didn't give it to him. And if you don't want it, it's going to go to a good home sooner or later. I will make a decision short. There's only so big of a pool of people that shoot anything that requires a large magnum rifle primer.

Yeah. and powders that slow. That is true. And you know that, but the trouble is Phil, you ever shot through 100 rounds of 300 wind mag in a sitting? No, but it sounds awful.

Your brain feels weird afterwards. No, it literally does. It was weird before, but that's a different thing. Well, yeah, no,

that's, that's for sure. You don't dedicate yourself to that kind of range time without having something a little bit wrong with yourself. But I got, I got to read in a study a while back, where they talked about large bore rifles. and cumulative brain damage from the concussion of firing them.

And I thought to myself, it's not unheard of for me to sit down and fire 100 rounds of 300 wind mag. And then at the time, I would grab my AR with a massive muzzle break on it and rip through another few hundred rounds. And supposedly, according to this study, I'll have to find the link to it and send it to you. You'll find it interesting, too. about 60 rounds of 300 wind mag is comparable to a moderate TBI like 60 rounds of 300 win mag moderate TBI um the concussion adds up man it does and i've been whacked in the head a lot just throughout life you know these things happen you get hit in the head sometimes these things happen i am well beyond my three free concussions uh hang on one second dr scary guy

We plugging Rimfire Radio yet. I'm assuming that's either a YouTube channel or a podcast, but yeah, I mean, plug away if their content is good. Yeah, definitely. I'll have to take a look. I'm not heard of them. Y'all, y'all need to understand, like, the way I am about plugging, like, other companies or

other content creators. Like, if they're not douche canoes and they're doing good work, by all means drop it. Like, I, I might learn something. I am very much of the school of thought of the rising tide floats all boats. And I am more than happy to see someone get turned on to content that is up their alley. That's that's fine with me. The only thing I ever say is like me personally, I am very hesitant to plug other people's content unless I personally like kind of,

I hate to say like the content creator because that almost makes it sound like it's a personal thing. But you know what I'm saying? Like if they're not a douche canoe, if they're not a gatekeeper, if they're doing, if they're doing because if they're doing because they're trying to educate the community, I am very forgiving of a lot of things. And if they're just out because they're trying to do the shit for attention and money and fame, then I'm like,

could be really good content, but I feel like you're doing it for the wrong reason. So I don't want to support you. That's fair. I think that's fair. I mean, it can be still good content, even if you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to encourage you. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, but that's, that's it exactly. It's, you could still make great content and be doing it because it's, career and it makes you money and it pays your bills but i'm just like i i i tend to look at people

who are doing this this kind of thing professionally and i'm like i don't think you need someone to help pump your your content yeah i i want to i want to elevate it hey those voices that are like doing good work but they don't have the notoriety yeah anyway so so i also got a new toy and I can't show you all this on the stream because YouTube doesn't freak out when you show people radios. Yet. Yet.

I'm sure that's coming. But anyway, so this is, this is the new darling of the internet. This is the Beofeng UB5R Mini. And I don't want to cast aspersions or make assumptions, but I do find it a little bit suspicious the fact that like every single amateur radio content creator blew up with this freaking radio at exactly the same time.

Almost like they all got sent these things to do reviews on. Probably did. At least a few of them did. At least a few of them did. Now, what I will say is that I didn't get sent this. I bought this for $50 off Amazon, this and his little brother, they're sitting back there. And then spent an additional $40 on a pair of these really nice, flexible, lightweight, signal stuff, dual band antennas, which I haven't had a chance to try because I've been playing with this for a week,

and this showed up in the mail right before the show started. Nice. But all that to say that, personally, I don't like doing unboxing videos. I don't do that thing where it's like, look at all the stuff that came in the box. I don't care. I wanted to spend a week messing with the radio and, like, come back to the table, ultimately with a recommendation for anyone that is in the amateur radio, but also like the good, the bad, the ugly, these are my gripes with it.

Yeah. This is what really, this is what stood out to me like that whole thing. And you have an actual user experience, not look at shiny. Yes. And you also have to bear in mind, like some of the things I complain about

are going to be the most eye rolling, Phil get over it. It's a $25 radio types of things. And I understand that. But I am an enormous user experience, user interface person. So things, little things matter to me because it's the things that like your hand and your eyeballs are going to

touch every time you look at this radio. So to me that matters. All right, all that being said, so UB5R mini. Let's go through the good first. It is absolutely the tiniest god-given radio on the market right now. I do not have large hands, by the way. And this is literally like palm of your hand fit. This is a very small, diminutive, very lightweight radio. So that is kind of one in the wind column. USB C charging ports directly on the battery. That's nice.

No charger required, no cradle, no nonsense. Literally, like, the same charging port that's in my phone will charge this. And I'm going to tell you right now that at this point in time, any radio manufacturer not putting USB suey ports directly on their battery should just go out of business because it is it is the de facto charging port it is ubiquitous it is almost universal and it's just simple it's not hard to just put a little port right there and a little bit of a little bit of electronic guts in the back to make it charge right off the battery it'll be nice too because then you can theoretically charge a battery off of the radio if you have two

if you have spare battery. You're talking about like plug this battery into another battery? No, no, I'm saying pull the battery off the radio, plug it in and put a fresh battery in the radio. Oh, yeah. Now, I will say that I have not done what I did with my GM15 pros. With those, since those are like my go-to, that's my go-to comp setup. I have spare batteries and everything for that whole thing.

So if anything breaks or anything dies, I've got stuff to hot swap. Nice. With these, I literally just bought one pack, one battery. These are intended much more for recreational use. I will point it out here. And this is one of those little goofy things that doesn't matter to anybody. But one of the things I noticed about a lot of these radios is that the bell clips mount directly to the batteries, which is a little annoying because if you hotswap the battery, you hot swap the clip two. However, with these, unlike a lot of older Beofangs, these literally quickly,

release right into the battery. They're not screwed on. They're not screwed on. Oh, good. That was a pain in the ass. Yeah, they just pop right in, pop right out. Like if I want to swap batteries, I literally pull this clip off, dovetails into the other one, slide back in. Bing, bang, boom, done. Quick and simple. That's good.

Yeah, little things like that that I want to call in quality of life improvements, but really what it tells me is that somebody's been listening. Let's see here. else. I actually had a list just in case I started wandering around and forgot about all the things. Because I've been taking notes on all this stuff all week. Um, do to do. Okay, here's one thing. I'm going to pop an antenna back on here real quick. Dial this thing up. Maybe, maybe not. We'll catch some side traffic while we're listening. So you'll hear the audio quality. All right. We're on a scan. So one of the things I did is I have everybody knows like I have an SDR rig and I spent some time when I was away on work like playing around with that checking out local air traffic listening on local air traffic and I was directly comparing this little thing to what that SDR rig is capable of. And I am a little frustrated to admit this, but this, hmm, something's moving around. that's New Orleans like front dwarf approach anyway

what I am forced to admit is that this actually had better reception better sensitivity better noise rejection than an SDR rig did now I will say that that SDR rig doesn't seem to have a real happy time with AM frequencies or with HF like it's really more in its happy place with like

VHFUHF and I've used to do things like satellite downlinks when you're up over one gigahertz but it just doesn't it's never felt really happy and in the AM band. But what I do find interesting is that I didn't have that my, my big old man pack, which is also AM capable. I didn't have that up north to play with and do a direct comparison. But the fact that this handily beat that SDR rig, I kind of want to put it head to head with that big old $400 radio and see if its sensitivity and noise rejection is substantially better than this.

I suspect it will be because it's it should be it's a I mean it's a wuxon KG 1000G it's a super heterody radio it there's no reason why this shouldn't get its butt handed to it by that but even if it does you're talking about 1600% more cost for that versus this yeah that's not to mention not to mention a base station radio versus this the AM reception of this, which was one of the primary reasons I decided to try these, because, like, I have radios that I can use for comps with my family, but, like, I am an old aviation nerd. So I spent about the first, I mean, six years in the military and then another... Somebody is talking.

Anyway, spent the first six years in the military and then spent a good handful of time in civilian aviation before transition careers. So, like, I've been around aircraft for a long time. I like to go and just hang out around airports, listen to traffic and everything. It's just kind of a hobbyist thing. And eventually, I'd really love to go catch an air show and be able to listen to tower frequencies and Unicom and Guard and listen to what's going on above my head. That'd be cool. I find it interesting. Yeah, that'd be neat.

Especially at an air show when you're watching it at the same time. Yeah. So the A.M. and the Air Band reception was. kind of one of my biggest reasons for wanting to give these a try, and I am extraordinarily impressed with what I was able to get out of this tiny little thing. Nice. What else? What else?

That's the Lecomber, Peter, lighting up now. Anyway, set this off on the side. Only are two or things. So there is the ability, not just with the program, the, not just with the programming software, but also through the face play to add and remove channels from your scan group. So basically what I did with this was I took everything out of the scan group, except for the air band frequencies.

So that when I put it in scan, it just, it hotswaps across 10 different channels. That is, all the New Orleans international channels, all the Lakefront Airport channels, and L31's Unicom. So like every AM,

air band within 25 miles of my home is all programmed in there now except for Hammond I do need to add those cool were you able to put to add those channels add channel names to those AM frequencies did you ever figure that out from the face plate so yes well let's power this back up I don't know if I'll be able to show you they'll probably be hard to get a picture of it on screen it's how bright that is compared to the camera. It may, but to let, let's see if y'all can see that. It may not want to zoom that.

Very blurry. Yeah, fortunately. Okay. So the short and long of it is using either the Beofeng software or chirp, because I did try both, which we'll get into in a minute. I was able to add channel names. You can also do it through the faceplate, but I discovered something that's kind of an oversight and kind of annoying. when you program a channel through the faceplate, there's no ability to insert a space in the channel name.

Oh! You can, using the programming, using the programming software. And the weird part of it is that there's literally a key over here that has what looks like the bracket that is a space, but when you press it, it cycles through like a bunch, it cycles through two or three special characters and then the zero, but it doesn't actually give you a space. Is there an underscore in the special characters?

I look for one. I haven't found one. Interesting. So no space, no underscored. Now, what I did do was some of these, I just kind of blur, you know, I use like MSY ground, all one word, which is annoying to me. Yeah. What I did start doing was I keep hearing a noise in my headphones, and I'm afraid it might be this radio. So I'm going to leave it turned off.

It might be. I'm not hearing it. Hmm. Anyway, so what I did determine was what I started using was just a period. Oh, that works. I mean, it works. It's a hack, but it's annoying that like it shouldn't have been that difficult just to have one of these keys cycle to you wouldn't even need a special key for it. This is like the old school like when you would text by pressing a key. Yeah. All you would have to do is have one of these just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap till you get a space. Again, user experience, user interface. It seems like it seems like a.

minor gripe maybe it is but it's still like guys you all couldn't have put a space in here it's it's one of those it's one of those little quirky things that makes you go hmm why did that get skipped because it's kind of a it's a core thing i mean i realize you're not ever going to be typing out full sentences into this radio's display one the display is not that big two it's not really necessary but yeah minor oversight but noticeable but i'll but i'll tell you like i've got quite a few i've got a quite a few channels in here that are like nine and ten characters long. So it'll take a pretty healthy string of text. How many channels can you program into that radio?

Do you know? According to the programming software, 999. Huh. That's a lot of channels. Give me a second and we'll find out. Program channel, channel memory and

900, 99. Nice. Riegel would like to know, can you edit it after the fact? Can you edit the channel names after the fact, I believe? Yes. Seastime context. That's good. Yes.

I mean, either through the programming software or through this, I will say that, and like don't beat me into the punchline, when we get to the downsides, that's when I'll talk about some of the things in here that were a little frustrating to use. But yes, you can, like, as a matter of fact, three of these channels that are now local tower frequencies, these were originally Barkstale and Shreveport channels, and I literally just went in and then changed the text, change the RX frequency,

and just flip those back around and turn them into local channels. So, yes, like, once you put a channel in here, you can very easily go in and modify it, or you can just delete it out and free that block up. That's good. So there is, there is all that. And last thing in the good column, there are twin push to talks on this radio. So you know normally, like you can engage dual watch, so it'll listen to two different channels. And then if you hit AB, then it'll flip between which is the active channel.

Here you literally have two different push talks. Oh, that's nice. So you can, now you can still flip those channels, A, B, top to bottom. But you can literally like talk to one, hit the other, talk to the other. I mean, it allows you, if you want to use it that way, to flip back and forth between two channels very, very quickly. Interesting. Now, the bad.

And everything I'm going to say from here, this point forward is like, it's $25 radio, Phil, give it some grace. I understand. But the same thing I said about being able to add and subtract channels from your scan group. There are no scan groups in this radio. So if you're familiar with scan groups, like some radios will have like group A, group B, group C, group D. Oh, okay, yeah.

And you put the channels. This does not. This has a single scan group and no provisions to make more than one. That's not an enormous. Not, again, not an enormous issue in a $25 radio. But annoying because Beow Fang's more expensive radios have scan groups. And I can't imagine the hardware takes up so much space that they couldn't have just put the program into here. it's probably just software limited i almost wonder if in time we're not going to find a we

jailbreak posted online that says hey if you do this you can unlock multiple scan groups or unlock different portions of those software not sure but that was that was an oversight that jumped out at me because what i would like to have is like a m on one scan group and my gmrs on a scan group and maybe my repeater's on another one and my merr's on another and so on and so forth. Not going to happen with this. Yeah. What you can do is just go in and one at a time, go through all your channels and just delete, delete, delete, delete from the scan group, leave them in the radio and just remove the scan ability and then put the scanability on other ones. Like, you can rearrange that.

It's much faster to do through the programming software, obviously, but like you can be done from the faceplate. Can be done through the faceplate. I will give that as an across the board like high five to this radio is I have not found anything. The only thing you cannot do from the face play the radio obviously is upload a graphic to, you know, for your start for your startup on the on the radio. But you have to use the programming software to do that. And ads. But as far as. Yeah.

And add spaces. That's it, though. I haven't found anything else you cannot do straight through the faceplay. which is helpful and encouraging. Fairly minor gripes, I would say. I've got a few more. No, I'm just saying on those two. Yeah.

So programming these things was a gigantic pain and ass. I do not know yet if the problem is like in the port itself, or maybe it was the cable that was provided with these. And if it is, I've got another one that should work just fine. But I only had the contents of this box when I went up north. But about 30% of the time I try to program whether read or write these, it would just fail immediately. Huh. I never had that problem with the other bail of things.

It would act as if the cable was not, it would recognize that the cable was plugged into a laptop, and it would act as if it was not plugged into this. Now, once I got it running, it seemed like it was going to run for a while. But there was one point where I literally pulled, pulled a program data of this, made some changes, went to upload it up, went to to upload it back in, hadn't touched the radio, hadn't touched the cable, hadn't even bumped the desk. All of a sudden, it wouldn't work until I unseated the connector from the radio and seated it back in and unplugged the cable from the laptop and plugged it back in. And finally, something got its mind right. I see the look on your face. I'm right there with you.

It's one of those things where it's like, without now, I will say that it did that, that whole thing I just talked about, it did that with one radio, but I plugged it into the other. worked fine. But then when I plug, but then when I plug the uncooperative radio back in it, that one started working fine too. What operating system are you running on the computer that you were programming that with?

Windows 10. Okay. I would be interested to see you try it with the same computer and a different cable. See if you get the similar results. See if it's one radio in particular. If it's one radio in particular,

it's probably the port on the radio. It seems to be both radios intermittently. Cable, which would make you think the cable, right? Yeah, make me see the cable or the USB port on the PC could be, you know, driver issue, perhaps, hard to say. Not sure. Like I said, the cable that came in this, I'll have to compare part numbers and everything, but I am pretty sure it is exactly the same cable as what I've used to program a bunch of my other biofanks with. Doesn't mean it's not a shit cable.

could be a shit cable, but if it is a shit cable, it's a shit cable, they include it in the freaking box. So, you know, why? You know, quality control is a thing. I mean, you could have just gotten one of the cables that's not good or is somewhat suspect. Yeah, that, that will see. I'll do some more data into that. It'd be interesting to find out what your long-term solution is, but there's more. So Bayofang's own software, when you go to upload an image, which, because I'm a gigantic nerd. There's an MOF podcast, you know,

badge that shows up on these radios now when you turn it on. But the instructions embedded into the programmer that tells you how to format the bitmap to fit on this screen and to work or wrong. The instructions embedded in the programmer written by the manufacturer that tells you how to make an image fit on this radio, those specs are wrong.

And I figured this out after trying about three times and couldn't figure out what the hell I was doing wrong. So I started going to YouTube University. Lo and behold, another content creator was like, oh yeah, the problem is, is that the, it's not a square screen. It's a rectangle. But Beofeng said that the image had to be,

it was either 124 by 124 or 128 by 128 square. And I looked at it and you can, it's not an exaggerated rectangle, but it's very slightly. No, but there's a bit of a rectangle there. Yeah. And it's 100, it's 10 pixels taller than it is wide. When you change that,

works perfect. That's great. I mean, it's terrible. I mean, you know, with as big of a company as Beofeng is, that's a kind of oversight that's kind of like, somebody's job was clearly to go through those instructions.

and make sure it worked. And they failed. Something was seriously missed. Yeah, but there's more. So if you use Beofang's own software to try to program AM frequencies into these channels, it will fail immediately. You will get a warning saying that that frequency is out of range for this radio, even though it is plainly not. You can program the exact same frequency through this faceplate, and it works fine. fine, but their own programming software will not allow you to do it.

Once you have programmed a frequency into this radio that is AM, that is within that range that the program software says is not right, you can then read the program back into the Beofeng software, and it will accept it, and it will store it, and it will let you save it, and then it will let you re-uploved that back into the radio. But it will, but the software will not let you select like 121.5 megahertz. it will not do it. Is that their only radio that does AM scanning? I'm not sure off top of my head,

but you market it a radio very, very loud and proud about the fact that it was AM capable and yet your own software, your own to home programming software will not allow you to set an AM channel. Huh. But it gets better.

You can do it through the faceplate, which is how I've done a lot of these. Right. And then CHRP Next has a beta driver. And CHRP led you throw AM channels into this just fine. So it's clearly a software side issue with the bailiffang software. I'm wondering if it's not that they built that software, say, for the original UV5R or a few of their other radios that was not AM capable. And they built in just a hard no on that.

That is possible. But if that is the answer to the question. then someone at Beofeng needs to get like a bit of a talking to you. Well, they need to send out at least a patch update or something like that. Yeah. What else do I have? There was something else. I have to remember what it was.

Oh. That came with it? No, no, no. I'm not there yet. To think is still thinking about the programming software. This is a minor thing and I will happily admit it. But with like my radiotity radios, they have the ability. in the programming software to set an RX frequency

and either no transmit frequency or you can disable transmission on certain frequencies. So you could set up, like with those radios, you could set up a channel to be listened only. Yeah. So let's say hypothetically, like we have someone with a GMR,

we have a younger person with a GMRS license, and we don't want them transmitting on hand radio frequencies because this is an amateur radio. It's wide open unlocked. Yeah. With the radiotity radios and program solver, you could literally tell the radio, thou shalt not transmit on this frequency,

listen only. That's useful. This offers no such functionality. If you don't pick a transmission frequency, it will set the exact same as the receiving frequency. Interesting. Which I understand. That's like a design choice,

but it's one that I'm pointing out that like, it would be a nice feature to have, especially because this is the price point of radio that a guy with a couple of kids is going to go, all right, I can buy one of these for me, one of these for my wife, one for each of my two and a half kids, be under a hundred bucks in the whole thing, program it all up, kids are all legal, kids are going to dick with buttons. Yes. And they could accidentally get themselves into broadcasting on a channel they should not. Potentially.

Potentially. So all that to say. Oh, and the one other thing, the thing you and I actually talked about, let me throw this up in front of everybody. So if you notice on the right, that radio has like a really aggressive radius on the bottom of it when he's sitting on a flat surface. And I pointed out to Nick that because this radio is so lightweight and the bottom of it is radius so aggressively and it sits on these little bitty feet on the bottom of it, this is about the most tippy radio I've ever felt. like if you set this thing on a flat surface with a tall antenna on it, if you set this thing down the least little bit incorrectly, it's going to fall over on itself.

Minor problem could be remedied by using like one of the smaller rubber duck antennas, but it's just one of those things like the criticism I originally had was when I, when I was using this, not with the signal stuff antenna that will probably live on this thing forever now, but I originally was using it with the Fagoya 770, I was telling Nick, this is a Fagoya, not a Nagoia. Because a Nogoya 771 is a $25 antenna, and this was the antenna that Beofeng included in the box with a $25 radio.

So close. I mean, I've got a legit 771, and this is, this feels really, really similar. But it doesn't say Noguia anywhere on it. So take that with a grain of salt. But, oh, that's a good point, Raggle. Hmm. If you normally run it standing up, there's probably a three. printed stand or base out there you can clip onto it potentially find an STL I'll make you one

potentially but I also tend to think that Beofane could have like taken the radius out of the bottom of this so that there's just more surface area on the bottom I'm gonna tell you but it's but it's kind of a catch-22 because this feels so nice in the hand I was gonna say I'd be willing to bet you somebody was holding on to a prototype one that has square or corner and they said, yeah, can we just like round that corner a bit? Yeah. And then I was like, I'll show you a rounded corner and then they put this giant fillet on there. Yeah.

Yeah, but that's like the one downside to be as the, the radio being this small and this light is that Nick, Nick's immediate reaction was like, wow, that would fit really good in a radio pouch. And I'm like, this is like half the height. Well, actually, I said it'll fit great in a grenade pouch. It will fit okay in a grenade pouch. Like even in like an AR mag shingle, which those fit radios pretty well. They do. This thing is just entirely too small to fit comfortably in a radio in any kind of a reasonably sized radio pouch at this point. Like this is, you know the pouch I was really thinking of when I had that in mind was the old Alice pouch with the old Alice M16 mag pouches with the two grenade pouches on either side of it?

I bet you would drop right into one of those Alice side pouches. it might actually do you have one to try it no damn i'll bring one to prep for our summer camp or you could just buy a pair of these yourself for goofing off i could but i already have four bayoufangs but you don't have a uv5 rs and they're all programmed but you don't have a teeny tiny little one that's am capable

i don't but i really i don't have like the interest in the air bands that you do it wouldn't really add any fun i i realize you're trying to spend my money and that's great. That is the way our relationship works, Nick. It kind of is. In fact, it mostly is that. But I just, it doesn't add any functionality to my radio panoply.

Because I've got, I have a nice Yasu handy talkie. I will probably eventually end up with a base station to utilize the giant tower I have out the back of my house. but I don't see myself listening to AM. Even if I had the option, it's maybe pick up a Cubs game, but that'd be about it. But Nick, doesn't this look like fun? I mean, yeah, I like to mess around with computers and stuff, but I do that with my 3D printer.

Yes, but I could teach you how to spy on aviation traffic around your house. Right, but I have no desire to. we will create your desire. You can try. My wife was still, you know, I said to my wife the other day, I said, that'd be kind of neat to learn how to fly a plane. And she said, well, why don't you get your pilots license? And I looked at her like she was crazy because, well,

it's not an unreasonable thing to say. Apparently it's like 25 grand in Illinois to get a single engine pilots license. Yes. So it is quite literally nice. bass boat price. Yes. Halfway decent bass boat price. Yes.

And that's before you buy the plane or the fuel or any of that other stuff. Cheaper to rent. If I had, if I had 25 grand spare cash laying around, I'm not getting a pilot's license. I'm getting a bass boat. I will tell you that I was told by several pilots that if it flies, if it flies, sleeps with you or floats, it's cheaper to rent. It's possible. All three of those pilots, by the way, were saying. So, you know, that might have called it.

But the flying and floating thing is definitely still true. I mean, at a certain scale, I would agree with them at a certain scale. Like, if you're going to go fishing two weeks of the year, I get it. Renting a boat, it's about a thousand bucks, 500 bucks a week. It's really where you're at. And it'll be an okay boat. It'll float. It'll probably start.

And if it doesn't, it's not your problem. They'll just give you a different boat to you. flying is probably one of those similar things. How often are you really going to go flying? And the problem is that with tie down fees, hangar fees, maintenance, and the fact that the maintenance has to be done, whether you fly the damn thing or not, because there are, there's such a thing as flight hours and mandatory time on some of these things. Like, Thou shalt do an annual inspection, whether or not you flew the plane this year.

Yep. And you are almost certainly not qualified. according to the FAA to do that inspection yourself. So you're going to go pay an aircraft mechanic to go do it. So really, unless you're like my grandpa's late neighbor, crazy Bob, who would land planes on the road in front of his house, take the wings off, taxi him into his barn, and then store them there, put the wings back on,

and then fly away the next weekend. It's probably cheaper to rent space. It always comes down to, what does it cost to rent the plane? How many times a year are you going to rent it? And if the cost of ownership is less than that, then you own the plane. Yeah, that's what I'm telling you that for, for probably 80% of pilots I've met and I used to work at airports for a living,

80% of pilots would have been cheap, better off renting the plane. Probably. Now, some of these guys, they'll fly every weekend. Okay. every weekend. Then it makes sense to have one. Yeah. And they did.

And then you have the people that did it like as charter. They yeah. You know, did things with it. But anyway. There was a guy I used to work with. I worked with him tangentially. No,

Stewart. We're not starting over. No, we're on a hard limit for today's time. Yes. 16 minutes or Mrs. Matter of facts beats me with a rubber noodle. True.

He had a float plane that he would fly up to his cabin. that he had on the lake in that case he's turning like a sick i think he said it was either a six hour car trip or a two and a half hour flight makes a lot of sense he was going up to the cabin every weekend or every other weekend in the summer you know that that kind of thing that makes a lot of sense but i just i don't see most recreational pilots using it that often yeah so anyway Let's round this out, the verdict. As much bitching and complaining as I just got through doing about this Bayofeng UV5R mini. And I did a fair amount of bitching.

It's still a hard recommend. This is a hell of a lot of radio for 25 bucks. I think it's the same thing as the original UV5R. Is it the best radio in the category? No. Depends on how you define category, though. Well, I would say handy talkies as a category. Say handheld, handheld amateur radio.

No, it's not the best handheld. Fair. It's also like a fifth or less the price of the best handheld or even some of the better handhelds. So if you're equipping a small group of people that are not looking for the best radio, they're looking for an excellent. acceptable radio or a radio they can learn on, pretty good option. I would say it depends on how you want to define category. Stewart's going to distract us. Power output, I haven't hooked this up to my meter yet because literally I just got back

in the town from being out of town like six hours and a bit ago. Maybe this weekend I'll get around to plug in my meter into this, see what the output power is. but other people have independently tested it at about 4.6 watts on high power, which is perfectly acceptable. That sounds about right, because normally they're like, I think those, those radios from Beofeng are five watt radios,

which means they're ever so slightly less than five watts. Yeah. But all that being said, like I tend to look at it as, I don't think it's even rational to compare a Beofeng to a Yeeufang to a Ysou or an ICOM. Okay. Or a Motorola.

I don't, I don't, I don't think it's a rational comparison because you're literally comparing like toy to Camry to Ferrari. Like, what, what,

it's a different class. Yeah. The fact that they all have wheels and engines is kind of irrelevant. We're comparing two things together that are never going to compare at all. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what we're comparing. Fuel economy,

horsepower, handling, pick something. It's going to be completely weighted one direction. or the other, because these two things don't compare together. But if you compare this to the Beofeng GM15 pros that I have, that are

like Radiotity GM30s, if you compare this to a lot of other comparable small budget amateur radio radios, I think this is kind of the one to beat at this point. It's, I

haven't found enough about it that I don't like to sway me away from from recommending it and most of the things I complained about could be fixed a lot of them are software issues a firmware update to add scan groups to this a software update to the programming software to fix some of the little issues with that and that would erase 75% of my aggravation with this radio like a firmware update to add a space into the into the channel names when you want one. Like, it's a bunch of little bitty quality of life things that could be fixed and could be improved upon with a software change with no extra hardware without having to re-release

these things. And I think that would make these radios noticeably better and noticeably better to use than what they are now. But even the way they are right now as delivered, I am really hard pressed to tell us my not to buy a pair of these, even for my purposes. I don't have a Ham reader license. I have a GMRS license. Right. It didn't take me long to sit down and plug in all the GMRS frequencies, all the FRS frequencies, all the MERS frequencies. It's already got a one button press weather mode that cycles through all the NOAA channels. It didn't take long for me to put this into a state where I was able to use it as a GMRS radio, even though I understand the FCC frowns and such things, you're supposed to use GMRS radios for GMRS frequencies. Yeah, you, yeah, yeah, get over yourself.

I am operating within the specs of GMRS or the fact that I'm using a radio that would give them heart palpitations, but I am staying under the power limitations and within the frequencies. I think that's fair. I mean, look, as long as you're complying with the power regulations, you're really not going to be doing anything that wouldn't be done normally with a standard GMRS radio. So I fail to see what their sticking point is other than you're not locked in. I think a lot of it's because of the lack of, no, this is kind of a sidebar, but like I feel like a lot of the whole, I feel like a lot of where this thing about GMRS,

you have to use GMRS radios comes from is because ham radio involves licensing and testing, right? Yeah. So you as the operator are expecting. to know what frequencies are inbound, what frequencies are out of bound, you're expected to know all those things. You're not expected to know that with GMRS. Exactly. It's a test-free license. So I think that's the reason is because if they're not going to test your knowledge, then the radio has to be what locks you out of, which you're not supposed to play around in.

But if you have the knowledge that it takes to search YouTube to figure out how to program GMRS frequencies into that ham radio, you've kind of crossed that barrier to entry already. You've demonstrated enough knowledge that this is not an issue. Now, you could willfully choose to ignore that, but then you're, then you're making a willful choice to break the violations. I mean, to be perfectly frank, being able to program this thing for repeater usage with CTS tones, that's well more than what most beginners, in my experience, have an easy time with. True. And I understand there's hand-raded guys out there the same.

Programmed radius isn't difficult, but it's not. It's just a teacher teenage child has had a program this radio. Tell me how long it takes. True. It ain't going to be a two-minute job, put it that way. Yeah. So that's kind of the long and short of, like, my opinions about the UV-5R minning. it's there's so much in the win column here that even if it was a $50 radio,

I think it would still be really good value for the money, but at $50 for a pair of them, the value proposition is so frigging lopsided with this radio. It's kind of ridiculous. The, the transmission and the reception quality sounds really, really good. I had a chance very briefly to test this out and found Blue State Park last weekend

with some, some people that had GMRS radios and I was talking through the local GMRS repeaters using this and they were listening and they said that the transmission sounded pretty good on the air side. Nice. Like we talked about earlier when I was comparing this to my SDR rig, the noise rejection on this is so impressively good. I had better AM reception with local air band from this than I did my SDR rig, which the SDR rig kind of struggles with AM band for some reason. But I was really not expecting this to trounce it so thoroughly. Well, that's good. I mean, because if I recall it correctly, your SDR, what was that about 100, 100 and a half for all the kit?

No, I mean, it was like 50-ish. Oh, okay. So it's about twice the price is the Beofeng then. Yeah. I thought it was more than that. I'm not sure why I got that. It depends on it. It depends.

Because remember, when we talk about SDR equipment, you're also lumping in like a sawbird goes. and that dish. Right. That's probably part of where it was. There's a lot of SDR equipment in this house at this point, depending on what you want to do with the SDR. Like if you want to list your local repeaternet, that's a little bit of stuff.

And if you want to downlink and decode satellites, it's a different thing. Which is cool. Is above my head. You could figure it out. Oh, I could. Look, if the hobbies behind me and the hobbies to my right and left, or any indication,

I need another hobby like I need another concussion. This is fair. This is fair. So, yeah, sometimes a cheap day can be fun. I will happily admit that like, I bought these radios fully expecting that like, if they just sucked, they'd still be something to keep on hand for like, you know, going to local air show or hanging around the local airports. But I'm to be honest, I've, I've been so impressed by this little thing at this point that this might be a regular

rotation kind of radio. I don't. I don't think this is the radio I can comfortably hand to my wife or daughter. Because literally one press of a button and you go off of all the channels I've put in and you go completely

off the reservation into frequency mode with a wide open transmitter. So like, this is the kind of thing that like I would use, I would hand him my dad who's an extra class to hand radio operator.

But I still think I'm going to stand on business about what I said before about amateur radio. GMRS is always going to be the radio band. I recommend to the layperson. It's always going to be the one I recommend to a family that wants to equip, you know, spouses and kids with radios.

But I will say that to add something like this into your lineup where you can get a little bit outside of GMRS and you can put it, play with air band, with MERS, and you can start listening in on some of the local reports. reaction on the amateur radio side like having one of these in your kit that's that's worth doing in my opinion i think so especially especially at the price point for for a learning radio yeah

yeah and at this price point like fifty dollars for a pair of them if one of them's junk or one of them gets dumped dunked into a bucket of water or dies it's kind of a it's kind of a no big deal issue. Yeah. So. Yeah. Hey, Nick, guess what? I do have one question for you, Phil. If we end the show in three and a half minutes, we win. That's true. If any of the viewers have a Ruger 1022 with a heavy barrel and you've found a pet load for it

that works really well, send it to me. I'm about to buy a shitload of random 22 ammo to accuracy test this. Best of luck with that. All right. We'll see. It should be fun. I have a bet to win. We're going to cap this off.

I told all of you I could make an episode last less than an hour. And we're back to do it right here and now. Matter of facts, podcast is going to go out the door. If you have questions about radios or 1022s or nonsense, you should reach out. We'll talk about it another time. Bye, everybody.