Baofeng BF-T1 reviews

They came in quite cheap from some chinese website. I did some research in advance and there was an OM successfully using his BF T1 with a 2m repeater. They might kick some butt when having a rig in your car which does cross-repeat and you're working outside the car where the BF T1's antenna simply wouldn't cut it ;-)

I successfully tried it on 2m working dm0max. This repeater has offset RX stations listening on 2m. One of them is like 2,5 kilometers away from my QTH. That's why 1W RF power is more than enough.

I bought two of these because they have a fixed antenna and are about the size of a credit card. The range is not super great, but that is to be expected. If you have a 70 cm repeater close by, then these radios work great. They are not front panel programmable. You have to use the Chirp programming software. They also don't have alphanumeric channel memories and only store the channel frequency. The minimum volume setting is a little too loud, but what do you really expect for a $20 radio. If you buy the radio by itself it is only about $16, but that is without a programming cable. Make sure you get the USB programming cable with the radio. For a $20 radio, this thing is excellent!