Baofeng GT-3TP Is Here!

My Baofeng GT-3TP finally came today and was the last of four radios ordered over the Christmas period to replace a load I sold on eBay. It is the 8 watt variant of the popular GT-3/GT-3 MKII radios and even came in a GT-3 MKII box which worried me but when I opened it sure enough there was a nice shiny GT-3TP inside.

I've not had chance to do much with it yet but I'll go through my first impressions. The radio came with the usual charger, belt clip, wrist strap, car charger and the antenna which is surprisingly good and much better than the stock antenna that comes with the UV-5R and even the first series GT-3.

The RX and TX audio is great, the screen is the regular 3 tone version found on the UV-5R type models and not the covert dark screen. When I flicked through the radio I noticed the frequency range was 150-160MHz on VHF and 430-440Mhz on UHF which concerned me slightly. I did manage to open this up in the programming software to the frequencies listed in the manual which are 136-174MHz and 400-470MHz which is slightly less than the GT-3 MkII which goes up to 502MHz. Not a problem as you shouldn't be transmitting up there anyway!

The radios are visually the same apart from the GT-3TP name plate on the front. You'll notice my GT-3 has a black volume knob. I took this off an old scrap UV-5R because I don't like the silver one as I think it cheapens the radio. Otherwise both are the same. As for programming, I had to use the daily version of CHIRP software to support the radios firmware version and programmed it set to Baofeng BF-F8HP.

All in all a very nice addition to the shack, a nice upgrade on the already impressive GT-3 and I look forward to testing this radio out.

Thanks for reading as always.

73's, Lewis M3HHY.

Manchester, UK.