How to setup UV-5R Radio for Airsoft

[Leah]

Hello people

I'm trying to set up some UV-5R radios for airsoft. I've bought a license etc from OFCOM (better safe than sorry) and am now going about setting up the freqs on the radios. Does anyone have any links to any good tutorials for this? I'm pretty lost right now, there's two sets of numbers on the front (homepage(?)) of the radios, setting one of those numbers on each device links them up, but whats the other number for? and is there anything else I should be changing?

 

[Flintlock]

https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home

 

[Rogerborg]

With great power comes great consumption of time.

There are many many guides available for programming on YouTube and elsewhere.  The key things I'd bear in mind are:

1) You can only program in frequency mode, then assign what you've programmed to a channel.  Don't try and change anything when you're in channel mode - it'll let you attempt it, but any changes you make will just be discarded.  Why?  Because they hate users.

2) I'd program channels 1-16 to the PMR frequencies from 446.00625 to 446.19375 MHz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMR446#Technical_information).  Why?  Because then you can talk with people using PMR radios.

3) Hat tip to @Musica, if you're playing with a team then pick a CTCSS sub-frequency and program channels 111 to 116 to use: the PMR frequency, plus that CTCSS sub-frequency.

Just be patient and keep trying things out.  These radios are cheap with loads of features, but they do take some time to get set up.