Quansheng UV-K5

What Is the UV-K5?

The Quansheng UV-K5(8) is a cheap handheld two-way radio that became a favorite in the ham radio community for a reason that has nothing to do with the stock firmware — the hardware underneath is capable of far more than Quansheng ever exposed. Reverse-engineered custom firmware unlocks things like a built-in spectrum analyzer, wider frequency coverage, and other features the factory firmware keeps locked away.

Flashing Custom Firmware

Mine runs custom firmware from armel/uv-k1-k5v3-firmware-custom. Flashing it isn't a simple drag-and-drop over USB — the UV-K5 uses a proprietary 2-pin port instead, so you'll need a special K5 programming cable to connect the radio to a computer before you can write a new firmware image to it. Standard USB or audio cables won't work here.