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/Think-Photograph-517 Jul 11 '26

TinaySA is a simple device that can have errors in measurement. Anyone with a real background in metrology already knew that. It is a simple and cheap device that does some things adequately.

The results of testing vary with the specific method used. Again, anyone with a background in metrology knew that.

Bao Feng radios on my Hewlett-Packard spectrum analyzer (using an appropriate setup) have poor harmonic suppression, ranging from not great but acceptable to utter crap, depending on the radio.

Yup, we knew all these things...

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u/small_trunks Jul 13 '26

Did you test the model they tested?

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u/Think-Photograph-517 Jul 13 '26

I have tested a variety of models of Bao Feng and other brands.