BAOFENG
UV-82X3 Programming Notes
I have put these notes on my website in the hope of helping someone who has purchased one of these, which are the tri-band radio that has 220 MHz as well as 144 and 440. I bought one of these about two years ago as I didn't have any 220 gear left and wanted to revisit the band. Silly me, thinking I could use the front panel programming feature or even the "factory" software. If you have figured out how to do this, then I am happy for you, and you don't need this web page. But I couldn't get it to work. What instructions I had were cryptic and evidently translated from Chinese into pidgin English and really didn't make any sense. I am not a newcomer to land mobile radio, I have over 50 years of technical experience with Motorola, GE and other makes.
So what to do... I thought "Oh, here is the Baofeng software for this radio, and I have the cable, I will just program it with my PC." Nope. The software did not work properly or at all. I put it back in the box in disgust and there it sat for over a year while I ruminated on what to do. I had almost talked myself into thinking that the radio was defective, but almost by accident I found a way that works fine and that I can save you some trouble by explaining it all.
Use CHIRP, the open source programming software you can get free on the web. If you do not have a Windows 10 or newer computer you will have to download a "legacy" version but it will work OK. Now, here is the main monkey wrench in the gears. You select the radio you are programming as a Radiodditty UV-82X3 and NOT a Baofeng. How stupid is that, Apparently Baofeng buys these from Radiodditty and relabels them. You will find that the Baofeng radio listings in CHIRP include a UV82 but not a UV-82X3. So, forget about using Baofeng in CHIRP and use the Radiodditty. That is the key to the whole thing.
Next, any problems you have after this will be CHIRP issues. Your programming cable will almost certainly be a USB cable. You need to have the correct drivers installed to use these cables as there is a tiny circuit inside the USB plug end that has to be recognized by the PC. There are explanations of how to recognize the issue and to run the software disk to put these drivers in. This is sometimes referred to as the "Prolific" drivers issue. Basically, the problem is that the Chinese copied the Prolific USB interface chip but botched it and you have to load different drivers to get their counterfeit chip to operate. Once you get the drivers installed you will notice a "bonk" sound from the PC speaker when you plug the USB cable in. Many Baofeng and other brand radios come with a small CD that has these drivers on it. It is invariably supplied with a programming cable. Note that not all desktop PC's will accept these stupid mini-CD's, something usually found only in China. They fall right out of the Dell PC's that have vertical CD-DVD drives.
Your next problem may be that you need to get a working COM port selected. There is a tab where you select this in the software. You usually find out about this when you try to read the radio or upload to it and get communications or com port error message pop-ups.
After this you can fill in your channel chart and select assorted options. Issues about what CHIRP abbreviations mean on the charts are solved by reading the CHIRP info pages at the CHIRP web pages.
That's about it. My UV-82X3 now works well on all bands but beware of two things. One is that the radio comes with an antenna for 2 Meters and 440 but a second one for 220 alone. I did not want to have to carry around a second antenna and would probably lose it eventually anyway, so I got a cheap tri-band antenna on eBay. However, this new antenna is a plastic coated 19 inch whip which is a little difficult to use in the car or confined spaces, so you might look for a more conventional 6 or 8 inch "duck" antenna that offers all three bands.
The other thing is that it is not convenient to program the receiver in the radio for always carrier squelch, because there is so much RF garbage out there around any human habitation that the scan will constantly stop on buzzing and howling digital garbage from cable TV lines, industrial computers, you name it. I did this because in my area of California, not all repeaters transmit CTCSS, they just require one for access. You will have to figure this out on your own. If all the repeaters you want to use transmit CTCSS, then great. Hopefully the simplex channels ( 146.52 etc.) won't have digital garbage on them because those are traditionally carrier squelch. I am assuming the scan wants a CTCSS tone to stop scanning. If not, the scan feature is more or less useless.