Squelch Pop Suppression on the Baofeng UV-5 HT Portable Radio

The Baofeng UV-5 is an inexpensive ($25 US) Two-Way/Handie-Talkie/Walkie-Talkie style radio. It has a frequency range of 65-108 MHz (commercial FM radio reception) VHF: 136-174 MHz(Rx/Tx). UHF: 400-520 MHz(Rx/Tx)

Listening on an earpiece, it seems to have a very bad capacitive discharge which sounds like a loud “pop pop” which no one wants directly in their ear.

Ed Nisley at the Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning blog had a great solution. He used a pair of nose-to-tail Schottky diodes across the earbud to clamp the voltage to the diode bias voltage, about 200 mv which is fine for an earbud.

He writes:

Tamping those pops down made the radios listenable. I’ve often observed that Baofeng radios are the worst HTs you’d be willing to use.