Baofeng UV-5R — Programming a Repeater from the Front Panel

The UV-5R numbers are not the TIDRADIO numbers

If you own more than one of these radios, this is where people come unstuck. Offset direction, offset amount and channel store are menus 25, 26 and 27 on the UV-5R. On the TIDRADIO H8 the same three jobs are 23, 24 and 25. Same tasks, different numbers. This page covers the UV-5R, UV-5R Plus and GT-3, which share a menu system.

Watch it first

Paste the YouTube link into this block once the video is up. Until then the page reads fine without it.

You need six values before you start. Look your repeater up on RepeaterBook.com or check your local club's site. The example below is a 70 cm machine on 443.350 — substitute your own, and read the warning underneath before you copy the offset.

Settings and their menu numbers

Press MENU, type the menu number, press MENU again to enter it. Use the arrows to pick a value, then MENU once more to confirm. EXIT leaves without saving — that is the most common way to lose your work.

• Check Menu 25 first. Wrong offset direction is far and away the most common cause.
• Then Menu 13. The tone must match the published value exactly.
• Then Menu 26. 5.000 MHz on 70 cm, 0.600 MHz on 2 metres — they are not interchangeable.
• If nothing you set seems to have stuck, you were probably in channel mode. Tone and bandwidth cannot be changed there.
• If you can hear the repeater but cannot open it, the fault is almost always tone or direction. Receiving works without either, which is exactly why this is confusing.

Every menu number on this page was checked twice: against the Baofeng UV-5R / UV-5R Plus / GT-3 user manual, and against photographs of the radio with each menu open. That matters because menu numbers move between models. A number that is right for a TIDRADIO H8 or H9 will send you to the wrong setting on a UV-5R. If a step here does not match what you see, trust the label on screen — SQL, STEP, TXP, W/N, T-CTCS, SFT-D, OFFSET, MEM-CH — over the number.

Two pages. The first is a settings card with a blank column to fill in your own repeater. The second is the step-by-step with a photo of every screen. Print it, fill it in, keep it in the bag.

Page 1 — what to set, with the menu number beside each value.

Page 2 — every step, with the actual screen you should be looking at.

Download both pages as a PDF

Print-ready, US Letter, two pages.

Baofeng's manual covers the UV-5R, UV-5R Plus and GT-3 together, and documents the menus this guide skips — VOX, dual watch, DCS codes, scanning and the full CTCSS table. Worth having, though it is written as a reference rather than a walkthrough, which is the gap this page fills.

UV-5R / UV-5R Plus / GT-3 user manual

Baofeng Tech's manual library. Choose the UV-5R series document.

Programming more than one repeater?

Front-panel programming is fine for one. For twenty, build your list in Radio Memory Manager and load it with CHIRP in a single pass. The UV-5R is CHIRP's best-supported radio. Free with a HamCompass account, and your list stays saved.