The headline lead me to believe they were finding people with Baofeng amateur radios, so as to prosecute them...

Indeed, there are repeaters out there who's owners have "banned" Baofeng operators[0] since they believe the radios aren't legal (due to high spurious emissions[1]) underamplified microphones, poor output audio levels, and clicking noises, and that their low cost is undermining "real" ham radios. They can be uniquely detected through fingerprinting [2] (typically by looking at it's carrier frequency drift during the first few seconds of keydown).

No, this is just using a Baofeng transmitting the output from an mp3 recorder using an Arduino-powered relay to key the radio. This is also known as foxhunting[3], and it's a lot of fun!

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Baofeng/comments/5aitr0/oregons_lar...

[1] https://hackaday.com/2018/09/25/buy-a-baofeng-while-you-stil...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_fingerprinting

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_findin...

The attitude towards Baofeng handsets annoys me somewhat. I've had both of mine on an SA and they were absolutely fine.

What tends to happen I reckon is that the end user runs it into a cheap antenna or mismatch and nukes the LPF, something which can happen to a $500 Yaesu HT if you're an idiot.

But the gatekeeping is strong in amateur radio. Annoyingly so.

And I get it. You've spent decades and $1000s acquiring HAM equipment, learning the craft, just so you can DX some guy in Kazahkstan. Then some amateur with a $80 handheld and a bit of antenna wire manages to pull off the same thing. Without the years of experience and hundreds of dollars of equipment.

It's worse than that really. A lot of people are like a acquaintance of mine. Bought a FT DX 5000MP, which wasn't cheap, has hundreds of books on the matter, boxes of cables and bits of antenna, speaks knowledgably on the subject but hasn't made a single contact yet after 5 years of having a license. But he hates 'feng scum like me.

Not with a Baofeng. Long distance DX is typically done with HF gear at lower frequencies. Baofeng is a 2-meter VHF radio where communications is basically line-of-sight.

You're right in the context of Baofeng HTs, but people get equally furious about some Chinese HF radios as well, like the Xiegu X5105 or Recent RS-918 (though the argument with that one is that it ripped off the open design of the mcHF, but the fact that it's an all mode, all band QRP HF transceiver with better features than the likes of a Yaesu FT-818 costing hundreds of dollars more probably factors in as well).

Very true, HF radios are nothing magical. Very common parts can make you as good HF radio as physically possible.

$10k iComs are mostly unicorn poo, with exception of somewhat useful DSP filtering, for which the real cutting edge research in radio tech is said to be used.

So true. One of the first things I did was build a direct conversion receiver with decent audio filtering. It had 45 mostly discrete components and sounded as good as a top end Yaesu. Similar to this one: https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/using-the-nm0s-hi-per...

You can do satellites and ISS with a feng though. Don’t have to go across or round, up is good too :)

The elitist attitude is what kept me from becoming a radio amateur.

(Back then, ham radio software was also consistently proprietary payware - in an area where every participant would have benefited so much more from an open source approach, as you could expect actual contributions - and software-defined radio was the devil, at least that was the impression I got.)

It put me off too for many years. If it’s any consolation there’s a lot more welcoming people these days. Tends to be the older hams and a section of black box operators who suffer from elitism. The younger lot (under 50) are totally different.

As for open source, this was probably the original open source. Lots of people build their own radios and still do and publish the designs for nothing. There are technical journals such as Sprat which cover this on old fashioned paper form. Software is mostly open now from what I have seen. Main tool these days for digital modes is a good example http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx.html - some people are using this with home build SSB transceivers and computer interfaces.

They're just (more often than not) lousy radios, buy a used Motorola, or a Yaesu FT-60.

They're not that bad really. The programming interface sucks but what HT doesn't it suck on?

I've got an FT-60 and FT-818 as well for ref.

They're disposable radios - you cant fix them, align them, or otherwise do much to them, every single one I've seen has poor selectivity and sensitivity. They do usually transmit on frequency and are decently stable, but thats about it.

You’re correct but that doesn’t stop them being useful.

DM-5Rs are banned because they are DMR Tier 1, not Tier 2, and use both slots of DMR TDMA. UV-5Rs are ok radios, their main problem is not being very sensitive in reception because they are single-conversion SDRs at RX.

Wouxun are very good Chinese radios, with analog RF front-ends and very sensitive, but the price is in the same order of magnitude of the Japanese.

Did Wouxun fix the issue where eventually it loses programmed channel memory, and you have to reprogram them every time they're turned off and back on?

I don't know about this problem, didn't happen yet in my radios (kg-uv9dp and kg-uv1dp).

I haven't personally ran into it either with mine, but supposedly it has to do with limited write cycles on the (cheap) memory module that they've used:

https://www.grapevinehamradio.com/2014/01/wouxun-memory-loss...

However, most reports are from a few years ago. So I was curious if Wouxun changed the module in newer modules.

Are you implying that there are systems out there that can pinpoint the manufacturer by the received signature? I'm sure there are more advanced systems out these days but the MoTron TxID is what first comes to mind which would match against a pool of "known" prints. [0]

[0] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ecbc/ba18aeff4072d35aad4bf3...

anecdotal evidence, but I once bought a Baofeng F8hp as a cheap 2 meter for a trip to catalina island. The flashlight LED on it died on the ferry over, and the radio itself eventually barely received even local NOAA, let alone the 2m/440 relay at the islands airport. At no time could i hit any repeater.

the sights and sounds were incredible, but it was the last time I went cheap.

Anecdotal evidence suggest the most affordable indestructible handheld is the Yaesu FT-60.

Sure, it retails at $150 or so - a handful of Baofengs - but the upside is you’ll only ever need one...

Plus, it has wideband receive coverage for whenever you want to monitor airband or marine VHF. Similar marks for the FT-70, which often costs about the same as the -60.

Same price as four Baofengs; will last longer than four Baofengs.

It sounds like a pretty straightforward Sam Vimes Theory sort of situation.

I'd agree with you.

What are the legalities of a fully automated setup like this? I thought automated transmitting was illegal on ham bands.

Beacons are explicitly allowed. You can find the regulations covering them at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.203

Relatedly, automatic control is defined at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.3 and covers other devices as well like repeaters.

Automatic operations and beacons are allowed as long as the control operator (the ham in charge) sets them to ID properly. Permanent beacons also have a transmission power limit (20W EIRP I believe).

Baofengs do seem to die quite quickly if they are TXing constantly, at least they do in the desert.

burning man? (that's the only place I've used mine)