This probably will work with other radios, I have not tested any except for the two listed above.
All FCC Rules apply, if you are not licensed you shouldn't be broadcasting on channels which are forbidden.
Loosely based on these GT-3 instructions.
I had a lot of trouble flashing on Windows 10 and MacOS, I should really have just started with Linux and not wasted a long time with the other OSes.
I used Mint which is a distribution based on Ubuntu, I'd venture to guess this would work with any debian derivitave and could probably be easily adapted to other distributions.
Older versions of Linux should use CHiRP Legacy, modern distros should use NEXT. Skip any Legacy directions if you're using NEXT.
You need Python 2 to install CHIRP Legacy, therefore you need an older version of Mint/Ubuntu. CHIRP Legacy will not install on Ubuntu focal (20.x), but will on bionic (18.x). I tried hacking on it for like 2 hours with focal and failed hard. Use Mint 19.3 or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
You'll need a Serial-to-USB cable, we got two, one was nothing but trouble. Here how they appeared in lsusb:
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 1a86:7523 QinHeng Electronics HL-340 USB-Serial adapter
Bus 006 Device 007: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port
The Prolific one worked great, the QinHeng did not. I believe the QinHeng came with a kit and I purchased the Prolific on its own. Here's the Prolific on Amazon.
Most folks should skip down to the NEXT version, below.
This builds from source, you can experiment with the Flatpak, but this is what worked for me.
Get the latest source tarball from CHIRP, mine was chirp-daily-20210814.tar.gz.
https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_daily/LATEST/
sudo apt install python-libxml2
tar xzvf chirp-daily-20210706.tar.gz
cd chirp-daily-20210706
python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install
Get the latest source tarball from CHIRP Next, mine was chirp-20230313.tar.gz.
https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_next/
wget https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_next/next-20230313/chirp-20230313.tar.gz
tar xzvf chirp-20230313.tar.gz
cd chirp-20230313
sudo apt install wxpython-tools
sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 setup.py build
sudo python3 setup.py install
I'm not certain if you need both of these or not, this works for me. It allows your user to get permisssions to the /dev/ttyUSB0.
sudo usermod -a -G tty $(whoami)
sudo usermod -a -G dialout $(whoami)
sudo reboot
- Turn the radio off.
- Remove the side cap for the headphone/microphone.
- Plugin the cable to the headphone/microphone.
- Plug the USB into your Linux machine.
Open terminal and do lsusb it should show up as the Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port as above. Yes, even with the radio off.
I had some trouble running as my normal user, so I ran as root with much delight, again from the Terminal.
sudo /usr/local/bin/chirpw
You don't need to run this with sudo, if you added your user to tty/dialout.
/usr/local/bin/chrip
This will load the GUI application, which looks very bare bones.
Select Radio then Download From Radio.
This will load the Radio selector, you can see I selected:
- Port: /dev/tty/USB0
- Vendor: Baofeng
- Model:
- LEGACY: UV-5XP
- NEXT: GT-5R
CLICK OK
This will show some instructions, which we've already started.
Now turn your radio on, yes, I know it shows a bunch of other stuff, ignore it.
CLICK OK
This will start the cloning.
Now it should show the programmed channel list.
You should save now.
Modifying and adding channels is simple, in this example I'm just duplicating my Channel 21 to Channel 22.
Here you can see I added 155.7000000 to Channel 22 and named it 022.
Select Radio then Upload To Radio.
You'll get the Radio box again with everything pre-selected.
CLICK OK
You'll get the instructions again.
Assuming you have not turned off your radio, you can ignore this.
CLICK OK
This will start the cloning again.
Once the cloning status messages disappears, your radio should reboot and you should now have whatever channels you programmed.
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