Mod Your Quansheng UV-K5 - EASY! [Make it Even Better] 

They are all the same K5, K5-8, and K6 and there are no socalled "new models", if your unsure you can look it up on FCC there is even a letter from Quansheng Claiming there are no inner differences between these radios, they are identical, only differences are cosmetic, like design or feaures that have been removed, like fx USB port.. Here is the letter. Difference of models (letter from 9-3 2023) "Subject: Explanation of differences between product types FCC UV-K5Model Number:UV-K5, UV-K5(2), UV-K5(6), UV-K5(8), UV-K5(9), UV-K5(11), UV-K5(22), UV-K5(66), UV-K5(88), UV-K5(99), UV-5R, UV-5R PLUS, UV-82 To Whom It May Concern: We, The QUANSHENG electronics hereby declare that the models are identical except the model names & cover designs. Except for the differentabove, no other modification is performed.Sincerely: Feili Chen" Its from 9-3-2023 there are 3 models, one with White screen, one with Yellow and one with Blue and it seems all the models above is variants of these. It also looks to be the exact same speaker acroos all models from the inner component pictures, so if you hear differences, maybe software tuning but take a look for yourself as Im only relating to Quansheng's own FCC report and the indiviual component pictures, between models,. There is also extensive testing, mainly with R&S RF labgear equipment. Sadly not alloved to l*nnk on YT, but just use your FCC that stands on the back of your radio, and also take notice its the same FCC acroos models and why only one FCC RF testing was valid for all models, as its the same product, as Quansheng emphasize to FCC in their "model-difference" letter.. Likely take it with a pinch of salt, when influencers, claim all sorts of new goodies or RF sensitivity or output variables... they often have a secondary financiel incentive. Label : XBPUV-K5 - just look that up online. the big PDF testanalyzing-report with all the testing merits is quite interresting, not least for people that like to test on their own and compare it to FCC own values. But overall its a shockingly decent radio at that ridiculous low price they are being sold at, with a highly diversed Beken BK4819 half-duplex TDD FM Transceiver baseband chip. specs. • Worldwide band: 18 MHz ~ 620 MHz and again 840 MHz ~ 1200 MHz • 12.5/25/6.25/20 kHz channel spacing • On-chip 7 dBm RF PA • 3.0 V to 3.6 V power supply • CTCSS tone receiver with tail CTCSS frequency detector • 23/24 bit programmable DCS code • Standard DTMF and programmable in-band dual tone • SELCALL and programmable in-band single tone • FSK data modem • Frequency inversion scrambler • Voice activated switch (VOX) • RF signal strength measurement • TX audio signal strength indication and RX audio signal strength indication • Frequency scan function • 3-wire interface with MCU with maximum 8 Mbps clock rate • QFN32 package, 4 x 4 mm "BK4819 is a half-duplex TDD FM transceiver operating within 18 MHz ~ 620 MHz and 840 MHz ~ 1200 MHz band range for worldwide personal radio. Besides speech communication, the BK4819 on-chip FSK data modem supports F2D and F1W emission to be used in both FRS and DPMR band for text message and GPS information exchange. The BK4819 is a complete, small form factor solution optimized for low-power, low-cost, and highly integrated mobile and portable consumer electronic devices, requiring only a few external decoupling capacitors and an external inductor for input matching."

@@JAKOB1977 Does that mean this Handset is not usefull for Airband anymore? (Because the channel spacing is 8,33kHz afaik)

Thanks Ray! Yes, my sincere apologies I wanted to thank you too and it was only after uploading I remembered your email! I received a few in relation to this, including from "the real Matt" haha!

Thanks mate!

Haha, not my fault :) Worth a plan with though

Welcome!

Thanks James! 👍

You're welcome!

Nope the UV-5R Plus is a recased K5 with a blue screen, and USB C removed?! But with a bigger battery, so they are worth buying just for the battery

Cheers I’ll check it out!

Glad to help

Glad it helped

Hi Ed i got one of these radios too, finding it difficult to update, any help would be appreciated mate

Denis from scotland 👍

@@denisthacker9825 hi Dennis , if you follow the links in the video it'll take you to the firmware download and then install the drivers and follow the prompts, it's fairly easy, I have no computer skills whatsoever and I managed it, I'm in Ayrshire where are you ? Kind regards Ed

Ive been using an old uv5r cable i think that may be the problem

You should absolutely not need to enable the "TX anywhere" mod. I have all of my radios locked down to prevent any, even accidental TX out of my licensed allocations (even though I'll soon be licensed to transmit on the air band, too). It makes absolutely no sense and can get you in A LOT of trouble.

@ Stop p*rent*ng other people, that you dont need it, doesnt meen that other people dont find it very usefull . I find "TX anywhere" extremely usefull, as I use and test it with other gear, like numerous handheld & PC spectrum analyzers, attenuators, RF-wattmeters, d*mmmm* loads, osclioscopes, handheld SDRs, and these cheap HT's to like 15 bucks ..that on their main bands can deliver +5watt, is an attracvtive priced self-contained RF tool for people that wanna work with RF signals and even have 3 segment of power-intensity.

@@JAKOB1977 Stop pretending to not understand the context of my comment. Who do you think is more likely to misuse that feature of a $20 radio? An RF engineer or some kid using it for airsoft?

@ nahh tone down with "but, but some very bad kids could maybe do this & this and someody in airsoft" if they went to the extent and modded these radios. People doing airsoft, that dont care about behavior, could do a lot worse woth an airsoft item, than transmitting at minor power at illegal RF bands. Its such a weird perspective to let the imaginable lowest c*mm*n nominator set the norm for everybody else. Maybe you do you, and follow your local laws and stop judging what mods should be allowed for other people. as you can read on G*th*b.. tons of RF people find the wide TX range, extremely usefull for testing other RF gear. Have you actually tested the output of these radios out of main primary bands..again you can get an idea on G-*th*b. IMO, one can also be too h*st3rlc on what other adult people are alloved to do with their own products, - as I emphasized.. "you do you", and I fully understand, (hence your text) that if you dont feel secure controlling a handheld radio like this one, and your afraid that you will do bad things with it, or somebody else will do it... then just dont mod it. Its a choice not a demand.. Cheers

@@JAKOB1977 but he will be able to tx on airband soon maybe you missed that bit? Or maybe like me you read it as Airbnb the first time.... Airsoft on the other hand is illegal in Australia.... Maybe soon airband and airbags and Airbnb will be illegal in Australia too.... Let's just hope that until that happens for all our safety that no plains fall out off the sky because of those pesky Airsoft kids pretending to be pilots....

From what I’ve read, the AM problems aren’t based on the firmware, but rather the AM decoding chip (or rather the lack there of). So sadly we won’t see better AM anytime soon :(

I guess you already know this but the egzumer firmware (on github) apparently sorts the backlight and AM airband issues. I'm waiting for my K5 so researching what is out there. Looks fantastic value for money.

You can actually make your own and use that

That's a hardware issue not software. Would require major mods to the power amp/ filters.

Make sure you have the radio connected and you have memory channels programmed in. Once you click scan lists, it opens up the window with the 2 scan lists. Scan List 1 and Scan List 2. Select whichever scan list you want for your GMRS radios, and at the top of that new window that opened up, click "Edit". Another new window will open, and on the left bar will be all of your programmed frequencies, and the right bar will be blank. Select which frequencies you want to be on the list by clicking on them, they will highlight blue. Then click on ">>" to move that frequency to the right bar. Once you have all of your GMRS frequencies in the right bar, click "OK". Then upload to your radio.

@@kenYTCA thanx for taking the time to write all that out! Thank you. Sooo...now how does one access that new memory once it’s in to be able to use it? Really appreciate your help!

@@johnemmons9087 no problem, once you have a list saved in the radio, go to MENU>31(should show "S-List" on the left, and choose which list you want to scan, either list 1 or list 2 that you added the frequencies to in CHIRP)>EXIT. make sure you're in memory mode then hold down the scan button and it will start scanning through all the channels on that list. For example my list 1 has all of my channels, and list 2 has a few local repeaters, and some PAPA system repeaters I know I can hit. So I use list 1 to scan every frequency saved in the radio, and list 2 to just scan the most active ones in my area. A cool feature, even if it is a little cumbersome to get it started.

@@kenYTCA you rock Buddy! Thank you! If you ever come to Florida, I’ll buy you a steak dinner!

@@johnemmons9087 Haha thanks! Glad I could help!

Baofeng, aka 2 pin Kenwood programming cable. This is the one I use - geni.us/odJ5ja

there is room inside for some more electronics. i think a switched filter board to unlock full power on hf and above/between uhf and vhf

I think if you try and tx in am mode it's not really am mode.... And is advised against because it might burn something out.... But I had to test it anyway....

Try incongito mode in Chrome or Edge whichever browser you are using

Are you plugged securely into the radio? I have seen a couple guyz have that problem. You really have to snap it in with a click.

Tried incognito mode and made sure cable was plugged in firmly. Maybe this radio I bought a couple months back is locked out from updating or the Baofeng cable is bad (it is brand new though and PC assigns it COM3). Doesn't even tell me what FW is currently on radio.

Dunno the rules in NZ, but in Australia they won't be type approved for UHF CB.

I think the developers of the mod site (who have been in the comments here) did develop a lockout for ham only frequencies - but I guess for more general GMRS etc maybe something like that would be cool.

@@HamRadioDX TY, Would be nice to have such an option. Better still would be to create an additional parameter: TX Prohibit On/Off so you can easily turn this on/off from the CPS for each channel instead of the entire band. Also useful when editing a channel, the option for next and back in a channel. You can go to the next channel without having to exit to open the next one. Let's hope these options will be honored in the next relase of the CPS software. 73, Jos

Just gotta ask is your name Josiah? Thats my brother's name and we call him jos never seen it anywhere else.

Hello, may be you found it already, but have this option in "Instructions" / "Hidden mods" now. Bye

Link in description of this video - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WR7dGj9ffgM.html

Dunno

There is an eastern European guy that put a switch on some wires that changed the value of a resistor or something....

@@damiengirvan5020 anu way you could share where you found it? A link maybe? Id really appreciate it

Thanks for the warning I was going to try it thinking that I could just reflash the stock... Did you try to reflash a few times or just one time?

@damiengirvan5020 I tried afew times and a few versions of the og firmware unfortunately it's just some bug that's done it I would almost be willing to bet it would be hard to recreate it as I had used some of the previous hacks for the s meter and spectrum display which worked perfectly I bet its something to do with the chain of events from those mods to the new ones I kinda wantbto buy another to see if I can recreate it so I can figure out what it was that sid it and how to get around it but I'm probably not smart enough to figure it out tbh but hopefully things get figured uo

@@nickkendall3764 sounds weird... It seems each install is leaving something over...

I have the same wuestion can Not find an answer but I thinit is the same radio cpu am ordering the k6 today did you find out anything in 2 days thanks

That would be pretty sweet

to few pixels..would not look good.

@@JAKOB1977 I know it would not be great , but just a very basic swinging needle. There must be someone that has the skills with a few pixels😀

I want a real needle with a dull light behind it like an 80's CB....

There's been a few more added to the website since this video - link in description

Yes it will. Just make sure the cable is pressed fully home. To get it into the required update mode, switch the radio on whilst holding the ptt, let gop of the ptt and insert the cable (make sure the cable is plugged into the PC and correctly configured - if youhave a lot of com ports (including virtual ones, it can assign an already used port number to the cable, in which case you would need to go into the properties of the comport and change it to an unused number. I used the USB programming cable that came with my Baofeng GT-3TP mkIII (the cable is marked 'Baofeng'). It worked first time (I used it with the latest version of Chirp, which supports the UV5k (8)). Providing the driver isn't made by Prolific, you should be fine. Prolific devices always seem to cause headaches - well all the ones I've ever used have been complete nightmares. On my PC I have a couple of physical com ports and around 40 (yes, really) virtual comports. When I plugged in the cable it assigned COM3 to it, which was already assigned to a device, so I changed it to com50 which is one of the free ones. The reason I have so many virtual com ports is that I run SDR's, with control programs, multiple instances of data decoding software, log books, omnirig and other software, each of which requires one, or more, com port pairs. I've had to do a cheat sheet so I can remember what com port is used by what program or device. Then there are the virtual audio devices to consider...

Many thanks for the information

Probably wrong cable I think - I replied via email

@@HamRadioDX Ok. Thank you

Your question has been answered. You cannot TX on AM Airband with this - period.

ok..thanks for clearing the confusion...iv got a video topic sugestion for you ..i can not seem to figure out what cheep radio paraglider and hangliders could use. a radio that gives us a listening watch in the visinity of uncontrolled air feilds and above 5000 foot goes along way in helping us comply.it would be a bonus if one of these afordable radios would transmit or could be unlocked to transmit on air band. we need it to be afordable,light,it would be grate if we could keep a listening watch and still comunicate between our selves on huf/cb and if we could also use it as a battery bank that would be usefull and we could trade the weight of a battery bank for the weight of the radio.clear sound like the program you show in your other vid is desiable in an enviroment with wind noise and if we are going to program it then its price will include cable.a collored radio would be benifitial as you can see it in the grass and may not leave it behind in the feild when landed and packing up.we dont understand them and we dont want them but rules demand we have them.@@HamRadioDX

Good question. What firmware version are you running?

@@HamRadioDX this was an out of the box in messed with radio. It did work okay before I flashed it. Everything seemed to be really cool until I tried to put in the tone to open up the squelch so I could test noaa. Thanx so much for a quick response! (My twin to this one I did upgrade on the QUANSHENG site and is working very well. )

Do you think you can help figure this out? Thanx!

@@johnemmons9087 So did the issue happen after flashing using the website? Have you tried flashing the original website

@@HamRadioDX I’ll explain from beginning. I purchased two QUANSHENGs maybe 2 months ago just when they were becoming popular. One I left in the box. The other I upgraded on the QUANSHENG website and then put our clubs (in Florida) repeaters addressees in. It worked fine and I could change values in the menu. The one I left in the box I checked to make sure it worked and it definitely did! I wanted to use this one for experimental programming. When I watched your awesome video! I thought that this is the time to try stuff on it. So I did! I did exactly what you do plus I added a couple more of the add ons. Tried the noaa channels to test and they would not work because they needed a tone to open them up. I went into the menu and tried making changes. I could make the changes and when I tried to save them, they would not save nor work. I tried making changes elsewhere in the menu and nothing worked. Sooo..that’s it in a watermelon shell!! Thank you for your help!!!!

How?

Got it going again, but had to use the web flashing tool, a mixture of usb ports and a flaky cable, always have spares, i bricked the original uv-5 I have, oem updater tool is flaky at the best of times

That's in the works :) in fact there's already a .py file for it. However, the rest of the squelch parameters that aren't delay-related are in the EEPROM, not the firmware.

Yup, I saw that claim too but no details in manual or elsewhere.

Hello, may be you found it already, but have this option in "Instructions" / "Hidden mods" now. Bye

Menu, 48, turn it on.

@@londo776 yes but no see wired , may be a baofeng ? and sorry about my yoda english

You can play pong! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7O5WgxQj4wM.html

I knew that one. That’s why I asked. 😄

@@ryanjaffe in the works, alongside snake game & Half LIfe2 episode 3.

@@JAKOB1977 doom

Probably lost a lot of power in a mismatched antenna. Have you tried this with an antenna cut for 927.5?

Same with cb frequency's : almost impossible to hear myself on a real cb radio because of a minimum power

Tested it with TinySA Ultra and a -40dBm 5w attenuator, and its minute power, and have to activate LNA for it to show at 927.5.. I can see the trace on the waterfall. its like -60dbm at medium and -56dbm at high.. the harmomics below is many times stronger so yeah minute power at 927.5Mhz Though at CB fx 27.2Mhz it delivering way more. (batt 7.83 no LNA) low -6.3dBm medium' -5.3dBm High 3.2dBm 50Mhz low 5.6dBm med 11.6dBm high 11.7dBm (so not much gain on 50Mhz from medium to high) 100Mhz low 29.3dBm med 32.6dBm 33.1dBm with old hacked fw 18-1300mhz btw, how do you dial in values above 999.999 as flipping the "up" numerous times' is getting old quite fast.. is there a keycombo, or is it mainly for PC programing purpose.?

Would hooking it up to a linnier amp work? I have one for CB.... I didn't try it cos I thought it wasn't putting out enough power to be amplified....

@@damiengirvan5020 yes it works with amp and atu as a filter into 29 mhz antenna for 10m fm simplex

also had a problem getting it to be recognized. got a cheap 3 dollar baofeng cable from CN, and butchered my registry and drivers etc on PC trying to get it to work as the cable was noticed in windows, it would simply not trigger that "upload" button in Quansheng program, when trying to load the bin file... finally concluded that the cable was semidefective. and was not align correct when it was molded so the pin didnt went far enough into the K5, a hobbyknife later it worked after cutting soem of the plastic away and now fully noticed in portable radio program and Chirp and the update program. so what I thought was a driver issue, was in fact hardware, as that Baofeng cable did not go down enough into the Quansheng.

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