$100 VHF/UHF Wouxun UV3D walkie talkie

Wouxun has been selling ham radio / Part 90 handheld radios for a few years already, with steadily improving quality. The unconventional yet economical design approach of using two different transmit power transistors seems to be sound economically and technically.

Some of the compromises in performance include

Squelch performance: the noise squelch has a too-narrow adjustment range–I can’t adjust it high enough for CSQ channels. This also stops the scanning despite having PL.

Scanning speed is too slow, and it doesn’t exit to your original channel if you exit–an expected feature that is missing.

No true dual receiver: the TDR button just scans between the two frequencies on display. If scanning, the non-scanning freqeuncy is treated like a “priority scan channel” in traditional radios.


If I just think of it as a single-channel radio, then I can be satisified. In urban environments, the noise level is too high to hear more than a couple repeaters well.