Of all the images I have seen of the attempted coup, I have only seen baofeng radios. These are very cheap ($20'ish) radios that work very poorly (they splatter all over the bands) even when equipped with decent antennas. They barely work when equipped with the stock rubber-duck antennas.
It's easy to be a snob about the type of radios that they are using, but that's not even the point.
These people are idiots. Bringing their cellphones, recording video of themselves committing felonies and then posting them online. There is already plenty of rules regarding what can/can not be said using amateur radios. There is however no requirement to provide identification before you purchase an amateur radio.
Anybody can buy them, and it's based on the honour system to use them according to the law. It's already against the law to use them in a manner that is against the law.
Id' like to see this used as a punitive measure against everybody who was using them during the coup. Maximum FCC fine for all of them.
I don't know why people complain about Baofengs so much. I have a bunch of baofengs that I bought to pass out as emergency radios at burning man. They have saved at least one person's life, because it meant we were able to call the emergency services when somebody had a heart attack and collapsed. I'm sure that guy is glad that that crappy $20 radio was there and a ham operator had configured it for the 911 service it was used for.
That alone cemented baofengs into my "good to have" category for life. They're cheap, and that's why I have been able to use them in the places I have.
People mostly complain about Baofengs because they leak a bunch of RF interference everywhere. Not obvious to the Baofeng user, but obvious to radio operators on other frequencies.
It's hit or miss in my experience. My first Baofeng was well behaved as far as RF interference, but it was so shoddily built that it literally fell apart on me a couple of years into ownership (the battery latch, belt clip, and TX button all broke within a week of each other).
My second Baofeng was more physically sound but had issues with RF harmonics on UHF so it was useless on the band I wanted it for.
I've since gotten a Radioddity DMR handheld and it's both physically and functionally sound. It cost the same as four Baofengs but it's worth it, not to mention the ability to talk on DMR groups.
I think 'these people are idiots' is an easy thing to think but almost always the wrong thing. Few people are idiots. Most people are just as smart as you are.
More likely, these people fundamentally aren't looking at the situation like you are. Probably, they don't care what you, or the police, or the FBI, or anyone else, think about what they're doing and don't care how they're being tracked.
They don't feel the need to hide.
It's comforting to think 'nah they must be idiots' for not hiding... but maybe more concerning to realise they could be right about not needing to hide.
Most people fall into a bucket in the middle of 'generally smart'. You're probably in there. Most people are in there. Few people are 'super smart' to the right of you and few people are 'idiots' to the left of you. This is a 'normal distribution', with most people in the peak you can see in the linked graph, and few people either side in the low parts.
> Your statement might be true if intelligence was say, uniformly distributed.
> But intelligence (like a lot of natural phenomena) is closer to a normal distribution.
This is a baffling comment - uniform distributions and normal distributions do not differ in any way that is relevant to this topic. What were you trying to say? Why did you leave this comment?
You can split normally-distributed populations into 2 halves - "average" may also refer to median. Also, by definition, half the population has an IQ[1] less than 100 (which is the mean). Gp is correct - most people are not as "smart as you are" if you are above average (IQ).
Do you know the term 'histogram'? Think about three pillars superimposed on the image you can see in the Wikipedia link - people around the middle, people below the middle group, people above the middle group. Most people are in the middle group. Most people are about as smart as you. A smaller number people are less smart and a smaller number are more smart. Get it?
You're introducing fuzzy language/approximations, which I was avoiding: one can say - in absolute terms - that any person above the median is smarter than most of the population.
An IQ band of 85 to 115 has 68% of the population, but are those at the lower end "as smart" as the upper end? The accuracy of your statement depends entirely on how wide your histogram bands are.
> In a normal distribution, "average" must always also refer to median; they are always the same value.
...and mode too! I am well aware of the characteristics of a normal distribution (this is HN after all). I was contrasting parents insinuation that gp's assertion on halving only works with uniform distributions
Both - I'm not sure what you're asking. Most people are 'reasonably smart'. Few people are 'less than reasonably smart'. Those two things aren't contradictory.
These people don't believe in objective reality (Biden won the election and there was no meaningful voter or election fraud) and I'm having trouble thinking of a definition of "idiot" where something like that doesn't qualify.
Again... maybe they don't care instead of they don't believe? They may tell you they don't believe but what's not necessarily what they really think.
'They're just an idiot' is lazy analysis and dangerous. Very few people are idiots. Most people are lucid. It's dangerous because you're giving yourself a reason to be less cautious (how dangerous can they be - they're idiots, right?) rather than thinking these people aren't playing by the rules I'm playing by, what should I do about that?
Whenever you think someone’s an idiot stop and think if it’s their modus operandi to make you think that.
We as a species would have solved most of our issues thousands of years ago if the average dude out there wouldn't be so incredibly dumb. And if you think about it a little bit, and judge form "normal" behavior around you, it's frightening how stupid people are actually. (Just put on the TV for a quick recap).
If you're here on this site chances are high that you're smarter than the average. Looking form this position it may be hard to acknowledge all that stupidity around you because "No, they can't be such dumb, nobody can be such dumb". But in fact they are even dumber than you could imagine...
>Whenever you think someone’s an idiot stop and think if it’s their modus operandi to make you think that.
These people aren't fifth dimensional chess masters. They're angry, and much of their anger is based on legitimate economic grievances. Instead of actually addressing that though, they fall back on the much easier conclusion that people with dark skin are to blame. The media plays a part in all this, but individuals need to take responsibility and these particular individuals never will. They don't trust anyone who seems "intellectual", so there's literally nothing I could say that would get through to them. Calling them idiots and moving on has the same end result for the target, but will convince a bystander more readily. If instead I engage with them in a debate, that automatically validates their (frankly insane) point of view, which confuses bystanders into thinking that maybe there is something to this "election fraud" nonsense. Deep down most of these folks are just terrible people who need to feel superior to others. Trump and the rest of the Republican party give that to them. They don’t want economic security, they want superiority over others. Until they change from within, they're going to continue to be "idiots".
In conclusion, why is it always "the left" that has to do the actual hard work in situations like these?
Desperate people mislead by skilled con-artists. You can focus on the fact they got conned, and judge them harshly for it; or, you can focus on the fact that they're that desperate in the first place.
I think we only stand a chance at solving the latter problem, so sorting the "idiots" from the enlightened doesn't seem like a meaningful activity.
Every major institution in our society is plagued with corruption: municipal, state, and federal politics, corporate media, private industry, peer-reviewed science, religion, you name it. We know that, and yet when one of these corrupt institutions produces an answer beneficial to our tribal beliefs suddenly we appeal to its authority and integrity.
There are a lot of comments and replies to my statement but you are the only one I've seen that has understood exactly what I was thinking about when I made the comment.
Don't record yourself breaking the law.
It doesn't matter which side of history you end-up on. It doesn't matter if in 10, 50, or 400 years, history decides that you were right. Right now, the authorities will find you guilty.
Peaceful protests often involve visibly breaking the law. Rosa Parks even did it without cameras! Gandhi, MLK, suffragettes, conscientious objectors, Thoreau etc.
There is a long history of police and intelligence services surveilling and infiltrating peaceful protest movements. Authorities of the day definitely will imprison people.
The big difference is that the QAnon/Trump/etc crazies are planning violent criminal action. Those people end up grouped with IRA/UVF, Nazis, ISIS, Hezbollah, mafiosos etc.
Asserting that the average engineer is stupider than the whole-population average is indeed pretty questionable. The odds that chrisseaton was correct are not good.
I believe the original assertion was that the word 'idiot' is often used as shorthand for people that have different priors and indoctrination as you, so to propose that engineers are somehow less susceptible to that seems like the more questionable take here.
Exactly; a good portion of them probably really believe that somehow #45 could order, and authorize, the things that happened. The rest were probably just looking for a strong opportunity to go full anarchy and guns equal power moment.
It makes me uneasy to see how much commentary on recent events seems to focus on insulting these people instead of hearing how society has failed them and why they're upset even if we tend to disagree with their suggested fixes. I think their presence in DC and that "colorful" person they elected are all symptoms of this behavior.
> focus on insulting these people instead of hearing how society has failed them
Look, I'm just a guy, with no fancy credentials or research to back this up, but the more I read, the more I try to understand this crowd, the more I talk with other people about this crowd, the more I believe these people are making choices. That is to say, there are plenty of educated and monied people running amok here. To believe that this is a crowd of impoverished, under/un-employed people with limited economic means that society has failed is in fact allowing them to behave recklessly and grow their audience. Nope. A lot of these folks know what they are doing or are allowing themselves to give in to their worst selves. That's not being failed, that's making choices.
> The people at the Capitol riot/insurrection were all relatively well off.
“All” probably overstates the case, but it certainly seems that they were disproportionately so. Certainly, those that have been arrested or identified from video (sets that seem to converge over time) seem to be largely employed (prior to the attack, less so after) and not poor.
While your ingroup is unique individuals with good and bad traits, your outgroup is an undifferentiated "them" that is selfish, untrustworthy, stupid, the reason for all these problems we're having, and we really may have to do something about them one of these days!
You're right to remind us about the cognitive biases relating to in-groups and out-groups[1], but let's remember that in the context of this thread, the original comment about "idiots" was:
"These people are idiots. Bringing their cellphones, recording video of themselves committing felonies and then posting them online."
It doesn't seem that the commenter was branding every voter for the opposing candidate an idiot, just the specific group of people who shared evidence of themselves committing crimes.
It's a pretty common sentiment I've seen lately even here on HN, for example all of the threads about how amateurish Parler is/was (LOL did you know they're so stupid they didn't know to strip image metadata?), like we told them to go make their own website but then mock them while they learn how to do it. I'm just sick of being mean!
"I'm a newbie web developer and I've never heard of EXIF", and
"It didn't occur to me that I shouldn't have recorded video of myself committing crimes and then posted it on the internet."
> I'm just sick of being mean!
Fair point. And regardless, "these people are idiots" doesn't really help us make sense of what happened, or figure out how to stop people from even wanting to do things like this in the future.
Well, technically, I only mentioned that that is how our "tribal urges" work.
I think it's an important thing to be aware of, ideally so you can recognize these thought patterns in yourself and others.
But of course I also implied that OP was doing this. A fairer description would note that most capitol invaders did not publish themselves committing felonies. Taking the dumbest/worst behaved members of the outgroup as typical is textbook.
And from inside the other group, the tribal brain thinks those crimes were committed by antifa provocateurs.
So far I assume (not in order): A) the "American dream" and doing better economically than your parents ain't all it used to be, B) non-hispanic whites are loosing their majority status, C) mass media and the internet are more disrupting than the printing press was, D) greed, corruption, and other political inefficiencies, and E) the scale and pace of change are unprecedented.
Everyone agrees that lots of stuff is broke. Politicians don't seem to be helping. We (the people) don't agree on next steps. Some want to turn back the clock. Others want to try something new. Too many want to impose their view on others who disagree.
I assume we'll figure it out eventually. Some cultures/societies will have it easier than others.
>insulting these people instead of hearing how society has failed them
It's always "the left" that has to compromise and do the hard work of understanding and placating "the right". The right wing is immune to consequences and allergic to self-reflection. I'll stop calling them idiots when they grow up, actually take responsibility like adults do, and act accordingly.
No amount of "economic anxiety" justifies an explicitly undemocratic coup attempt where people were running around looking to scalp democratically elected leaders.
There are real ills in society, but - ignoring that republican voters are significantly uninformed about things like the party's support for healthcare, e.g. Efforts to scrap Obamacare largely hurt poor Trump voters - that doesn't excuse them from the fact that they've swallowed the Trump Koolaid and taken part in a coup.
And besides, if you want to talk about society failing them - were there any black people in the Capitol?
Why are you and another reply quoting "economic anxiety" when that was never a claim I made? I'm talking about the total contempt you and others seem to have when talking about these people. If you think they are misinformed and have been misled, cool, let's reach out and try to help get them back on the golden path, but all I see is insult-slinging and you're still doing it.
Nice strawman... I don't think either of those things were acceptable either.
Quite frankly lumping in all of the protests over the summer, for example the one The Donald had tear gassed, with the looting that largely took place after dark is really saying the quiet part out loud.
If they'd protested outside the Capitol not in it, I'd be more sympathetic, even if they were campaigning for the end of American Democracy.
How's this for a double standard: a group of mostly-white "protestors" can storm the US federal government with minimal opposition from law enforcement, resulting in essentially one death. Meanwhile, black men and women live with an entirely reasonable fear that any interaction with law enforcement, no matter how benign the circumstances might be, could easily end in their death.
Those things happened happened for a reason - specifically yet another public murder by the police which was posted online as a video for the delight of racists everywhere.
There is no justification for the fact that imprisonment and murder of black people by the police happens, and is encouraged, to a completely disproportionate extent in the US.
It's also well understood that imprisonment in the US is run on a for-profit basis not dissimilar to slavery, and some judges have gone to prison for corrupt sentencing.
These police actions are immoral, unjust, and just plain nasty, and the best way to stop having your cities set on fire is to stop them happening.
This shouldn't be hard to understand, but in a country which has areas which are only just getting over Jim Crow and lynchings the connection between institutionally abusing some people and having them fight back seems to be too much of a reach for some of the population.
So these riots occur predictably after every avoidable trigger event. And they will continue to happen until that lesson is learned.
This is completely different to an entitled middle income mob of COS-playing couch heroes storming the political centre of the US and making credible threats against elected representatives inside it - after a speech by the president which inflamed the mob, and after a campaign of lies by the president which threatened the foundation of electoral integrity.
All very possibly at the behest of a hostile foreign power.
That's simple textbook domestic terrorism. It has no excuse or justification, and it's naive and misleading to suggest the two are somehow equivalent.
> These police actions are immoral, unjust, and just plain nasty, and the best way to stop having your cities set on fire is to stop them happening.
That is, by definition, actual terrorism. Attacking a civilian population to achieve a political goal. It doesn't matter how awesome or not your goal is.
You're going to find the same issue with that approach that most violent people do - people resist and fight back. Several rioters have already found out that lesson.
> This is completely different to an entitled middle...
No, not really. Insurrectionists will also discover their nonsense will not be tolerated.
> it's naive and misleading to suggest the two are somehow equivalent.
Stop using violence to achieve political ends. See? Easy.
It's always a Baofeng because they're the cheapest radio that looks the part; it's just a cosplay element - along with the plate-carrier with the MOLLE and the camouflage pants.
> These people are idiots. Bringing their cellphones, recording video of themselves committing felonies and then posting them online.
I don't think it's as simple as "these people were idiots because they recorded themselves committing a crime", to paraphrase this line of thinking. I'm pretty sure these people convinced themselves, and each other, that they were breaking the law to save the country. They thought they were recording a revolution in which they would be the new heroes.
I think it does have a simple explanation, just different from yours. I think that they assumed they wouldn't be punished, because they never have been. Cops don't shoot white protestors.
She was at the head of a mob of people breaking through the door into a Congressional chamber during a core part of the peaceful transfer of power. Suffice it to say that's a much higher bar than normal.
Now compare with a list of people with dark skin who were executed by police. Looking at these two numbers it's quite reasonable to conclude white people don't face consequences.
Should we have them shoot a few more white people to match the overall population makeup by race?
Police:
+ Shoot and kill more unarmed white people than any other race
+ Overall shoot more white people
+ Shoot and kill people by race proportional to the recorded violent crimes stats
+ Shoot less than a hundred unarmed people per year, total
And, none of this is really surprising. White people make up more of the population so of course they're going to be a majority of police encounters, including Use of Force (UoF). Not every UoF encounter is illegal or unethical, even if the other person is unarmed - life is not an action movie where you can vulcan pinch someone unconscious.
Whenever somebody brings up that UoF incidents by race match the violent crimes committed by race, usually it ends in a shouting match of who can claim racism the loudest. Yet we can recognize over-representation in violent crimes by any race is probably due to lack of resources - and we know the things that reduce violence in any population (marriage, having kids, being meaningfully employed[1]) are less accessible to many minority populations.
We'd make a bigger dent in UoF incidents and crime in 5 years by just making pre-K childcare free and widely accessible than any amount of angry protests will ever accomplish.
[1]: This doesn't mean low paying temporary or part time work, but either a trade or profession with longterm gain
Every major police force has a systemic racism problem and everything else is just window dressing. It's like the Civil War. In middle school you learn it's about slavery. In high school you learn it was about states rights and the balance between federal power and state power. In college you learn it's about slavery. There are always small factors worthy of study but sometimes the core reason really is that simple.
>We'd make a bigger dent in UoF incidents and crime in 5 years by just making pre-K childcare free and widely accessible
Good luck getting any Republican to vote for this. Republicans only care about people who are old enough to vote.
> Gates found the front door to his home jammed shut and, with the help of his driver, tried to force it open. A local witness reported their activity to the police as a potential burglary in progress.
Yeah, usually when you see people forcing a door open, you should let the police know.
> It's just racism
It's just the results of spiritual decline. Obviously anyone who has deeply found religion would know that spiritual decline is the cause of human suffering, and that you only need a belief in <deity> to reverse these problems. If only we still taught the bible/koran/whatever in schools!
Single cause claims for complex phenomenon are almost always nonsense, especially ones without actionable solutions that fail scrutiny. They make great headlines, but they don't really hold up. They're used to attack the outgroup, not fix the problem.
> In college you learn it's about slavery.
If that's all you learned in college about the civil war, you should ask for a refund. Slavery was absolutely one of reasons several southern states entered the war, but it was by far not the only. Most southerners would not have fought purely for slavery because most of the soldiers were too poor to have owned slaves.
> Good luck getting any Republican...
Ah yes, we all know <purple team> is to blame! If only it wasn't for purple team, us green team would have solved every woe and problem. After all, every place where green team is in control is a bastion of prosperity, equality and liberty - and everyplace where that isn't true is due to purple team somehow, for some reason!
Culture wars are useful for pushing narratives and keeping both sides locked in a relative stalemate. Coke and Pepsi both benefit from these antics (Are you a coke drinker or a pepsi drinker?), but it's not an appropriate framework for political decision making where you often need to find compromise and pressure points to move the conversation forward.
>Slavery was absolutely one of reasons several southern states entered the war, but it was by far not the only. Most southerners would not have fought purely for slavery because most of the soldiers were too poor to have owned slaves.
>What concerned Southerners most about Lincoln’s election was his opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories; Southern politicians were clear about that. If new states could not be slave states, went the argument, then it was only a matter of time before the South’s clout in Congress would fade, abolitionists would be ascendant, and the South’s “peculiar institution” – the right to own human beings as property – would be in peril.
As I said before, while there are other factors and while they are interesting and worthy of study, sometimes the core reason really is that simple. It's not "enlightened" to pretend that simple things are complex.
>Culture wars are useful for pushing narratives and keeping both sides locked in a relative stalemate. Coke and Pepsi both benefit from these antics (Are you a coke drinker or a pepsi drinker?), but it's not an appropriate framework for political decision making where you often need to find compromise and pressure points to move the conversation forward.
It's worked great for the Republicans for the last 40 years (Ronald was the original Donald) and there is no sign it will stop working any time soon. It's only ever the left who have to compromise. Name a time in the last 40 years where a Republican has compromised and been rewarded for it.
I don't think so. They were at the Capitol for a few hours. They committed some vandalism and brawled with the Capitol police. Maybe the guy with the zip ties thought he was there for revolution, but most seemed to be taking advantage of an opportunity to run in and see or loot the Capitol.
This attitude really saddens me. We should be advocating for all protestors to be treated with such gentle touch, not for all protestors to be brutalized the way BLM protestors were. Thankfully, this is the attitude I have heard from most BLM leaders.
I agree that the comment you are responding to is saddening, but I disagree with the characterization of the Capitol protesters as being treated with a "gentle touch". One unarmed woman was shot and killed, others were maced, beaten etc. Three other protesters died from causes that I've just seen described as "medical". This hardly seems like evidence of a light touch to me.
In my estimation the Capitol Police were some combination of surprised, unprepared, under-equipped, and under-manned. The police didn't seem to have any plans or preparation. Some police are seen standing aside and letting protesters in to the Capitol (which, I agree is a light touch, but I also saw police kneeling in solidarity with BLM protesters, which is also a light touch). Other police are brawling with protesters (which, I think is probably about the right level of violence, we just needed more police to be there doing it and for all the police there to understand what they were supposed to be doing).
I don't think the police should shoot Capitol protesters or BLM protesters. I do think they should use physical force against both when they do things that are unacceptable - e.g. entering the Capitol or destroying or looting stores. I would say both groups call for a similar medium touch.
If the BLM protestors attempted to storm buildings defended by the federal police that were deployed to those protests, they'd have been mowed down with light machine guns. Had the police not rioted themselves, nothing would have happened even if BLM had come to fight because it would have been abundantly clear that escalation would not lead to rising property values in Tokyo.
The Capitol should have been much better fortified by a much larger force given that the FBI, MPD, and Capitol Police knew or should have known about this plan for months. Had the presence of several hundred officers with multiple layers of fencing and visibly-manned M249 positions not been sufficient to convince their vanguard to run away, they would have been able to escalate to spotlights, LRAD, and less-lethal projectiles before needing to go with the real deal. A suitable amount of publicity for these preparations could very well have resulted in the Q Cucks Klan deciding to find an excuse to either make it a legitimate protest or call the whole thing off.
The deaths would have been at most two or three rioters, and possibly a few who get trampled in the panicked retreat. That would have been a light touch; it accomplishes the objective using a minimum of force, and if they saw reason nobody would even have been scratched. A medium touch would just be shooting anyone who tries to breach the perimeter until they stop trying (which would have been totally legal); a heavy touch would have happened to the BLM protestors if they had escalated to violence.
Kneeling in solidarity with protesters is fine because neither the protestors or the officer are breaking the law or indeed doing anything wrong. Letting an enemy force (and that's absolutely what a crowd of people with unlawfully-possessed guns and Army of Northern Virginia battle flags is) past your position is at a minimum conspiracy to enter and remain in a federal building without authorization.
There is some disconnect here. These are violent right-wing rioters storming a state capitol building. The allegation of OP was that BLM protestors were doing something like that.
I agree with you on how protestors should be treated, but take issue calling the people at the Capitol "protestors". Some certainly were simply protestors, but quite a few -- those we are talking about now -- crossed the line from protesting into breaking and entering, vandalism, and in some cases violent behavior.
I think "protester" is appropriate for people who are protesting a political process in a political building - even if some of them exceeded acceptable behavior, committed crimes, were violent etc.
Using BLM as an example, is it still fair to call them protesters though they sometimes fight with police (violent behavior), graffiti or break windows (vandalism), loot (breaking and entering)?
Sure, I agree. But this thread is specifically talking about the subset of the protestors who were committing crimes. No need to call that subset "protestors".
Are you sure about this? The link you yourself shared shows photos of people carrying "thin blue line" flags. The quotations inside the article you shared says "Just before their violent physical assaults on journalists, the right wing extremists literally tried to kick in the door of the Oregon State Capitol in Salem".
Thanks for noticing, you are right, i mixed the two events. The BLM rioters breached a court house in Portland [1], while the other side attacked the state capitol in Oregon.
I think many felt they had nothing to hide. Many are in camera calling it a revolution. Many aren't hiding theur faces, giving their names in interviews.
A person in one of the videos taking photos of random documents says "Ted Cruz would want us to do this".
The warning is probably directed more at politicians or civilians making complaints than the lawbreakers. It gives the agency something to point to when they get inquiries or complaints.
There's lots of issues regarding burden of proof. I doubt the FCC has enough evidence to identify these people, much less enough to arrest or convict them.
If you can get a baofeng to last out of the box longer than a week, and manage to DX a handheld or a repeater further than a parking space away, you should at least win a QRP award and a discount on your technicians test before you get sent to the klink.
Strong disagree, and wish this sort of gatekeeping wasn't present. Go get one of these things. They're $20, and ham radio is a fun and useful hobby.
I have many baofeng radios which have been in many forms of being thrown into boxes, backpacks, filled with dust, rained on, abused by drunks, dropped, etc. and they ALL are still working fine, albeit some with dest behind the LCD cover.
My baofeng 5 died two hours into a 12 mile backpackign trip across catalina island. It couldn't do a quarter mile line of sight with an airport 2m amateur tower and when turning on the flashlight feature in my tent it died entirely and would not power back on. I was entirely reliant on it for ranger station as well as general comms and phone patch/weather. Packing this plastic trash couldnt have been more dangerous.
How is it a "byzantine nightmare"? I plug it into my computer, put in the frequencies (and names I want for the channels.), and upload the configuration. That seems pretty straightforward to me.
As a fun ham toy, it's fine. For critical safety-of-life communication... do you want to be using any amateur radio? Maybe you'd want a Motorola or ICOM cop radio.
Agreed. I've had two $25 baofengs for camping / outdooring for... Four or five years. Both work fine. They don't see a ton of use but they have been banging around camping bins and glove boxes for that time.
Batteries hold their charge well.
Bonus-- they have FM radios. Weirdly the only thing in my house powered by batteries that does!
same. it's a perfectly fine shitty radio. i have 3 of them that i keep stashed in various places. they certainly aren't as nice as my yaesu, and they do splatter, but they do work just fine.
Hah! What a great bit of word-smithing there. I love it. Yes, that's a good description of the Baofeng radios. They're crap, but they're fine crap. Cheap, but workable as a beginner radio. I bought mine right when I got my Technician license, and it's served well for dipping my toes in the water a little. But I'll be buying a higher quality radio soon, if all goes according to plan.
It depends on how much money you have, and how interested in VHF/UHF you are. If you're very interested in VHF/UHF (repeaters, simplex with your neighbors) and you only have $20, then it's the perfect radio for you.
If you have $10,000 and want to chat with people around the world, then you'll want something else. People hear "ham radio" and think "chatting with people all around the world", but that is not what Baofeng radios do :)
I've had a UV-5R for four years. Receives fine. The handful of times I've used it to transmit on a local net nobody mentioned vomiting in disgust at its poor transmission characteristics. The original battery even still holds a charge, which I really didn't expect, since it's probably spent 3.9 years sitting on the charger being kept at the float voltage.
I had a VX-7R- it was nice, but I didn't use it enough for the amount of money sunk into it, so I sold. I bought a UV-5x3 when I again wanted an HT. It's pretty good- I like that it now has alphanumeric channel memory and I get to see what's happening on 220 MHz. But this is a $90 radio...
Your post reeks of elitism, which is very common in the radio community. Saying baofeng radios “barely work” when you use them with the antennas they come with is a blatant lie.
I’m sorry that there’s some sort of “eternal September” in the radio community because of baofeng users, but lying won’t bring back the days when only people who could afford very expensive equipment could enjoy radios.
>Saying baofeng radios “barely work” when you use them with the antennas they come with is a blatant lie.
Not a lie. Personal observation.
When I first got the radio I tested it at our groups ham shack. I was 150' away from our repeater (open field, no obstructions) and could not get the repeater to acknowledge my signal. I could hear everybody fine, but could not TX.
One of my buddies handed me a spare antenna, and presto I was able to use the repeater. I was also able to hear repeaters that were 20+km away that I couldn't tune-in on the rubber duck.
Transmit and receive improved with a different antenna.
I thought I had a bad radio, bad transmit button, or bad microphone before I swapped out antennas.
My statement is 100% accurate based on my observations. Grumbles from the other members in my group agreed with the sentiment. They ship with bad antennas.
Your observation of one radio you tested doesn’t seem to support the kind of sweeping generalizations you made about all Baofeng radios. I have two UV-82HP, two GMRS-V1s, two UV-82C, one BF-F8HP, a UV-50X2 and a UV-50X3. Never had any problems working repeaters or for simplex communication in terrain, both when off-roading or providing volunteer communications for events.
Baofeng radios work just fine, and many amateurs I know have several as well. I have never tried the $20 UV-5R radios so I can’t comment on how well those work.
But I absolutely don’t buy the argument that all Baofeng are terrible radios and people must be idiots for buying them, even more so when the evidence turns out to be that you had a radio with a bad antenna once.
I have worked a satellite with a Baofeng (and Yagi antenna), so at least one works.
I stopped using mine because I don't have a spectrum analyzer and was told by Reddit that they send a lot of power out of band, which isn't something I care to do.
(I have a VHF module in my KX3 that meets my VHF needs. Mostly. Would like even better frequency stability for meteor scatter, WSPR, etc.)
The reason there's no requirement to identify yourself is that this stuff isn't hard to make and the FCC already employs professionals for tracking (this is a common sport) and arresting people who abuse the radios.
Of all the images I have seen of the attempted coup, I have only seen baofeng radios. These are very cheap ($20'ish) radios that work very poorly (they splatter all over the bands) even when equipped with decent antennas. They barely work when equipped with the stock rubber-duck antennas.
It's easy to be a snob about the type of radios that they are using, but that's not even the point.
These people are idiots. Bringing their cellphones, recording video of themselves committing felonies and then posting them online. There is already plenty of rules regarding what can/can not be said using amateur radios. There is however no requirement to provide identification before you purchase an amateur radio.
Anybody can buy them, and it's based on the honour system to use them according to the law. It's already against the law to use them in a manner that is against the law.
Id' like to see this used as a punitive measure against everybody who was using them during the coup. Maximum FCC fine for all of them.