Quansheng UV-K5 Handheld Radio - First Impressions

At a price of £16.44 (including shipping and VAT) from one Chinese supplier on AliExpress, the Quansheng UV-K5 is an amazing little radio. Mine arrived in about four days and I had it receiving GB3ES and BBC Radio 4 in a few minutes without using the manual. I used to work on user interface design and the UV-K5 isn't bad. It's completely different from the Japanese radios, so might take some getting used to.


There's a very active FB group for it - Quansheng UV-K5 User’s Group.


The manual is very basic and the print is on the small side for my 81 year old eyes. I found a PDF someone has made on the FB group which is much easier to read on my tablet. The radio menu has 51 functions - lot's of stuff to play with!


It's solidly made and feels quite substantial. Not flimsy at all.


An interesting feature is a speech synthesiser that tells you in English what it's doing when you change channels, or input a frequency, for instance. It also speaks Chinese (Putonghua dialect according to a friend of mine in HK to whom I sent a recording). When I turn it on it says “Welcome, channel mode” and the memory channel number it's set to, or “Welcome, frequency mode.”


It can be used for frequency measurement, so if you have built a Tx you can check that it's outputting the correct frequency.


Programming CTCSS tones, and frequency offsets for repeater operation via the menu system is quite easy. Saving the VFO to memory is a bit tricky, though.


Quansheng claims FCC and CE, but I'd take that with a pinch of salt. Someone has mentioned that because the antenna like those on most HTs isn't very efficient second and third harmonics are attenuated so that it meets basic FCC requirements. I'll be checking it with my TinySA spectrum analyser.


Battery life seems pretty good, especially compared to my £499 Yaesu FT5DE!


Accessories include a charger base (European plug so you'll need an adaptor), belt clip and wrist strap. I can't see how to attach the wrist strap - it needs a little hole to loop it through and I can't find one!


The firmware can be updated enabling lots of additional features like SSB reception on HF and a spectrum scope! Here's a YouTube video describing it:


https://youtu.be/8DE-YBfNScs?si=UNwu3YdOmHTohmMo


Several other YouTube videos are available.


Summing up - a very nice little radio at an excellent price!


Leon Heller

G1HSM 

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