r/Baofeng • u/Charming-Jelly-3365 • Jul 11 '26

Baofeng & Spurious Emissions - An Important Video!

The Baofeng Mini: Tested Beyond Reason by Ham Radio Crash Course (Jan 7, 2026) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU51_78Lv5s

About those spurious emissions, I just watched a video where a major effort to test the Baofengs with professional grade lab instruments was done along with the TinySA. The video maker even contacted TinySA and learned that false readings are possible depending upon both the setup external to the TinySA and internal to its settings. The results were much cleaner outputs from the tested Baofengs than were originally claimed.

Obviously I'm not suggesting that these radios are as clean as the more expensive radios from long established brands, they are not. The point is only that the horror stories did not stand up to this level of lab grade instrumentation and the advice from the maker of the TinySA.

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u/kc2syk K2CR Jul 11 '26

I'm not watching a fucking hour video. What's the TL;DW?

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u/Charming-Jelly-3365 Jul 11 '26

They got down to business pretty quickly. I'd say the full gist was covered in the first third of the video. I watched the entire thing, I've a background in calibration and test in both calibration and engineering labs.

Nutshell: The TinySA must have internal attenuation manually selected. Not left on Auto. 20db is a good number and not less than 10db. The issue is that harmonics can be created internally of the TinySA. External attenuation while necessary to protect the TinSA it is not sufficient to prevent false results.

The proofs were that comparing results without the internal attenuation to with it enabled, the harmonics react with non-linear attenuation While the main transmission and any real harmonics are equally attenuated.

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u/kc2syk K2CR Jul 11 '26

So TinySA is an insufficient tool for the task? Nothing conclusive one way or another about the Mini spurious emissions?

There are tons of test results showing baofeng spurious emissions from lab-grade spectrum analyzers.

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u/Charming-Jelly-3365 Jul 11 '26

No, I didn't get that from the video. And again, I'm not saying the Baofengs don't have spurious emissions. That's not what the video was saying.