Scan a range of frequencies with your UV-5X3

One of the cool things that you can do with your BTECH UV-5X3 Triband Radio is easily scan a range of frequencies. Now, with the UV-5X3, you don’t have to scan an entire band, but instead program the radio to scan only a portion of a band. This saves a lot of time, as you don’t have to scan frequencies that you’re not interested in.

For example, I wanted see what NOAA weather stations that I could receive where I live here in Ann Arbor, MI. It was easy to program the UV-5X3 to do this.

• Set the radio to frequency mode by pressing the VFO/MR key.
• Set the frequency step by pressing the MENU key, then 1/STEP key to view the current frequency step. To change the step, press MENU again, then the up and down keys to select the desired frequency step. Once selected, press MENU again. I programmed the radio for a step frequency of 10 kHz.
• Press and hold the */SCAN key for about two seconds. The display will show: “RANGE —:—.”
• Enter the frequency range (in MHz) that you want to scan, as shown in the figure at right. Since I knew that the NOAA weather stations were located around 162.500 MHz, I entered 162:162. This programmed the radio to scan the frequencies between 162.000 and 162.990 MHz. As soon as I entered the frequencies, the radio began to scan.

When it located one of the NOAA weather stations strong enough to break the squelch, the radio stopped on that frequency for a short time. I found that I could hear WNG647 on 162.450 MHz and KEC63 on 162.550 MHz.

To listen to one of the stations found, I pressed the */SCAN key to end scanning. And, since KEC63 was the stronger of the two stations, I pressed that key when the radio stopped on 162.550 MHz. Then, I listened to the weather report.

You can, of course, use this feature to scan for activity on other frequency bands. To listen for activity on the 2 m amateur radio band, for example, you would program the radio to scan between 144 and 148 MHz by keying in 144:147 when asked to do so. To listen for activity on the GMRS and FRS frequencies, program the radio with the frequencies 462:462 and a step frequency of 12.5 kHz.

The UV-5X3 will also scan the frequencies that you’ve programmed into memory in channel mode. To scan in channel mode, all you have to do is to set the radio to channel mode by pressing the VFO/MR key, then press the */SCAN key and away it goes.