Posted: 3/13/2015 11:33:20 PM EDT
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1. I am going to purchase a few accessories for my B F UV-5R+. I will be getting an antenna (Nagoya NA-701?) a magnet mount antenna for my 4Runner, a program cable and a couple of gender adapters for radio to antennas. I have surfed the net and have found only one place that states they sell branded product at reasonable prices for all of the items I want. Has anyone done business with Buy Two Way Radios and if so, what was your experience? I prefer not to buy from eBay due to all of the counterfeit item reports I have read. I did a search on customer reviews for B2WR and most seem to be positive, of course you never know if they are subscribed to a service that fluffs their reviews. It would be nice to do a single order rather than piecemeal.
2. One of the adapters I am considering is a SMA F to BNC F to allow use of BNC based antennas so that the miniature SMA doesn't wear so quickly from antenna swaps. Is this worth doing or am I wasting $$ trying to avoid a non-existant problem? |
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Quoted:
1. I am going to purchase a few accessories for my B F UV-5R+. I will be getting an antenna (Nagoya NA-701?) a magnet mount antenna for my 4Runner, a program cable and a couple of gender adapters for radio to antennas. I have surfed the net and have found only one place that states they sell branded product at reasonable prices for all of the items I want. Has anyone done business with Buy Two Way Radios and if so, what was your experience? I prefer not to buy from eBay due to all of the counterfeit item reports I have read. I did a search on customer reviews for B2WR and most seem to be positive, of course you never know if they are subscribed to a service that fluffs their reviews. It would be nice to do a single order rather than piecemeal. Yes, Nagoya NA-701. Excellent and proven. Buy here. http://www.ebay.com/itm/370482649911 This is the exact one you need for the UV-5R and variants. 2. One of the adapters I am considering is a SMA F to BNC F to allow use of BNC based antennas so that the miniature SMA doesn't wear so quickly from antenna swaps. Is this worth doing or am I wasting $$ trying to avoid a non-existant problem? http://www.ebay.com/itm/370482648968 Radioshop888 is a good outfit, and you can pay via Paypal. You can get your NA-701 from them, too. Yes. I have that in my kit so that I can use a 4' thin pigtail from the BNC (adapter) on the UV-5R to the pigtail, and on the other end of the pigtail an SO-239 socket to hook up the coax to a magmount on some vehicles. This works quite well. The thin pigtail takes the weight of the coax off the connector on the radio. Plus, having the adapter to BNC allows connection to BNC antennas if I wish. This pigtail. http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamantht/4512.html 
There is also an NA-701 with BNC. http://www.ebay.com/itm/220727917404 I screw my 701 directly to the radio via SMA. But being able to use any of a number of antennas with BNC is good. The main reason I use the BNC adapter is so I don't have to turn the radio around and around and around and around to remove from the pigtail when I leave the car. I made a trip through 5 states, using the UV-5R with the BNC adapter, the pigtail above, and coax out to a magmount. I had the Diamond 72 quarter wave antenna up top. I had programmed the radio with repeaters along my route. I was able to hit most of those repeaters along the way, though didn't get a human reply each time. Still, made some good QSO's even with just 4 watts. Handling the UV-5R like this is much like handling just a microphone, though just a little heavier. I use the large extended batteries. In fact, don't even have any of the short standard batteries anymore. The long batteries make the radio MUCH easier to hold and put the thumb in position to operate the buttons easily while still maintaining a good grip. You don't need the car charger with the extended battery, just charge it once every 3 or 4 days. The battery has an unbelievably long operating time. On receive it draws almost nothing. |