Using A Baofeng UV5R Radio

The reason I am a fan of the Baofeng (Chinese for "Proud Wind" apparently), is because it makes ham radio affordable and accessible for emergency purposes.  My first ham radio I got recommended into was a very high quality but very expensive Yaesu, that was ultimately very limited.  They cost over $150 apiece in 2014. Just getting two of them cost over $300 and that did not leave me much money for anything else.  Even though there are higher quality (and more expensive) handhelds, I will choose the UV5R over them only because it saves me money to buy other ham equipment, and they can actually do a lot more when it comes to emergency preparedness. 

Things most relevant to the UV5R for ERC are on simpex are: 

Volume - up 

Power - on 

Menu items: 

0 - squelch - 1 or 2

1- TXP - Transmission power - High 

5 - wide/narrow - Wide (for wideband operations, voices sound fuller and it transmits more broadly). 

11 - R-CTCS - off (if it's on, your radio will only hear someone if they are transmitting a squelch tone - receive continuous tone coded squelch)

13 - T-CTCS - 100.0Hz (doesn't matter for simplex, but it's the most common tone for repeaters - transmit continuous tone coded squelch ). 

14 - voice - off (unless you want to hear it tell you what you're doing in English or Chinese with every button you push)

26 - SFT-D - off (on is an offset shift for repeater use, you want it off for simplex)

Hit the orange VFO/MR button (under my thumb in this pic) to switch between VARIABLE FREQUENCY OPERATION/MEMORY RECALL.

When it's in MR mode you'll see two small numbers on the right

 

When it's in VFO mode you'll see it's blank:

 

YOU WANT TO BE IN VFO MODE (bottom pic, no small numbers on the right, otherwise you have to program channels), press the orange VFO/MR button to toggle between them. 

A/B - the UV5R has two displays or "channels" called "A" and "B" - A is the top, B is the bottom.  You toggle between these by pressing the blue "A/B" button and you'll see the arrow move between the op or the bottom on the left.  

 The arrow needs to be pointing at the one you want to listen to or intend to program.  It doesn't matter which one you choose, just know if you program a frequency in and the A/B button gets bumped, you may think you're on frequency but won't be able to hear anything.   The green light means it's receiving a signal. 

  I skipped ahead of the (PG rated) editorial comments at the beginning right into how to use it at 2:50, but this is the best UV5R tutorial I've found. https://youtube.com/watch?v=7jFn7ZGVldg&si=DeKlJ_O1hAbuBpA1?t=2m50s if you wish to see it on YouTube.