Vol 3 — Baofeng F8HP

Section	Topic
1	About this volume
2	Hardware tour
3	Operating modes
4	Programming workflow
5	Codeplug backups
6	Field use
7	Tips and tricks
8	Resources

1. About this volume

The BaoFeng BF-F8HP is the 8-watt sibling to the ubiquitous UV-5R, distributed in the US through BaofengTech. It earns its bench slot precisely because it is the cheapest credible dual-band HT that puts an honest 8 W on 2 m and 70 cm — $60-70 at mid-2026 street, throws into the glovebox or the go-bag without complaint, and can be lost or destroyed without ceremony.

The 8-watt rating is the single distinguishing claim against the UV-5R (5 W) and the sea of $25-30 Baofeng clones. Whether 8 W vs 5 W matters operationally is a fair question: 2 dB of TX power gain is the difference between full-quieting on a marginal repeater and a noisy copy, but it is dwarfed by antenna gain. A Nagoya NA-771 (§6) on a UV-5R will out-perform the stock-antenna F8HP on any path long enough for the extra wattage to matter. The honest framing: the F8HP gives you 2 dB of headroom on top of a UV-5R, plus a slightly better receiver and slightly more rugged housing. Well-spent if you’re buying a Baofeng anyway; not well-spent vs a Yaesu / AnyTone if you use the radio daily.

When to grab the F8HP off the bench over the others in this lineup:

Vs. Yaesu VX-8DR (Vol 2): when you don’t care about IPX7, AM-airband receive, APRS, or quad-band coverage; when the radio is going somewhere it might not come back from (vehicle trunk, loaner to a club newcomer); when the operating need is FM voice on 2 m / 70 cm only.
Vs. AnyTone D878UVII PLUS (Vol 5): when local repeaters are analog FM and DMR isn’t part of the operating plan. The D878’s receive audio is markedly better; for hours-per-week listening, save up for the D878. For ten-minute net check-ins, the F8HP suffices.
Vs. Baofeng UV-B5 (Vol 4): when you want the 8 W (the UV-B5 is 4 W) and the more mature CHIRP support.

This volume covers the F8HP specifically — not the broader BF-F8 family (the BF-F8+ is a 5 W radio, the BF-F8HP is the 8 W variant; they look identical and confuse retailers regularly). Verify BF-F8HP on the case-back label.

2. Hardware tour

The F8HP is a typical thumb-sized HT — roughly 110 × 58 × 32 mm with the BL-8 battery installed, ~250 g with the stock antenna and battery — sized somewhere between the smaller VX-8DR (smaller chassis but heavier with battery) and the larger AnyTone D878 (bigger keypad, deeper chassis). Build material is injection-molded ABS with rubberized side panels at the PTT and microphone areas. Not submersible, not officially IPX-rated — a brief rain shower won’t kill it; an unplanned plunge into a puddle will.

2.1 Controls

The control layout is the canonical Baofeng dual-VFO arrangement: combined volume / power knob on top (clicks audibly into the off detent), SMA-Female antenna jack adjacent, orange flashlight LED beside that (controlled by the side MONI button). The 1.5” segment LCD shows both A-side and B-side simultaneously above a 4×4 keypad (0-9 plus A/B, BAND, VFO/MR, FM-radio, MENU, EXIT, UP, DOWN). Left side carries the Kenwood-K1-style 2-pin (3.5 mm + 2.5 mm) speaker-mic / programming jack with PTT, MONI, and CALL buttons. Bottom has the battery latch and charging contacts.

The dual-VFO display is genuinely useful — listen to a calling frequency on A-side while keeping a repeater pair on B-side, with PTT defaulting to whichever side is selected (A/B button toggles). The radio does not do true simultaneous receive; it dual-watches by rapid alternation, so a transmission on one side masks the other.

2.2 Antenna jack

A persistent gotcha. The radio has an SMA-Female jack on the chassis, meaning the antenna must have an SMA-Male connector. This is the opposite of the VX-8DR, AnyTone D878, and most other HTs (which are SMA-Male on the radio / Female on the antenna). When ordering, the Nagoya NA-771 is sold in two variants — NA-771G (SMA-Female, for Baofeng) and NA-771R / NA-771J (SMA-Male, for Kenwood/Yaesu/Icom). Read the suffix. An SMA gender adapter ($5) costs ~0.1 dB at 70 cm if you already own an antenna in the wrong gender ([Antennas Vol 5 §9](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol5.md) for the adapter loss budget).

2.3 Battery

The radio ships with the BL-8 Li-ion pack — BaofengTech rates it at 2000 mAh nominal (verify capacity printed on Jeff’s actual pack — TBD with Jeff). Runtime depends almost entirely on TX duty cycle: at 5% TX / 5% RX / 90% standby at low power (1 W), ~16-20 hours; at 8 W high-power TX, ~~8-12 hours. An aftermarket BL-5L 3800 mAh pack (~~$25 mid-2026) roughly doubles runtime at the cost of doubling the radio’s depth — fine for shack/glovebox, awkward on the belt.

Charging is via a proprietary drop-in cradle with a 12 V / 1 A barrel-jack wall wart, ~4 hours empty-to-full for the BL-8 (cradle regulator is the bottleneck — current-limited well below what the cell can accept). No USB-C input on radio or cradle; a USB-PD-to-12V-DC pigtail covers field charging from a USB power bank (§7.4).

2.4 TX power per band

The F8HP datasheet rating, per the BaofengTech product page:

Band	High (W)	Mid (W)	Low (W)
2 m (136-174 MHz)	8	4	1
70 cm (400-520 MHz)	8	4	1

The 8 W rating is honest within ~10% at band centre (146 MHz / 446 MHz); drops to ~6-7 W at the band edges. Spurious-emission performance is the well-known Baofeng caveat — 2nd-harmonic suppression around -50 dBc, 3rd around -55 dBc, both meeting FCC §97.307(d) by a comfortable margin but well below the -60-to-70 dBc of commercial-grade HTs. When this matters (operating near a sensitive RX, or a tight band-edge), an external low-pass filter cures it.

2.5 Receiver

RX coverage: 65-108 MHz (broadcast FM) + 136-174 MHz + 400-520 MHz. No AM-airband (unlike the VX-8DR), no HF, no SSB. Broadcast-FM receive is surprisingly useful with stereo headphones in the speaker-mic jack. Rated sensitivity ~-122 dBm for 12 dB SINAD on narrow-FM — a few dB worse than the D878, roughly equivalent to the VX-8DR. In practice, image-rejection and intermod are the limiters, not raw sensitivity; Baofengs splatter on receive near a strong nearby TX. An in-line bandpass filter cures it for fixed-position use.

3. Operating modes

The F8HP is analog-FM-only on the two amateur bands plus broadcast-FM RX. There is no DMR, no D-STAR, no C4FM, no P25, no AM aircraft RX, no SSB, no packet TNC, no APRS native (though see §3.4 below for the workaround). The mode envelope is deliberately narrow — this is what keeps the radio cheap and the firmware simple.

3.1 FM voice — 2 m and 70 cm

The radio TXes narrow-FM (2.5 kHz deviation, 12.5 kHz spacing) or wide-FM (5 kHz / 25 kHz), selectable per memory channel. Default is narrow-FM, which most modern amateur repeaters use. Always match the repeater operator’s documented setting — wide-FM TX into a narrow-FM repeater overdeviates and clips; narrow into wide sounds quiet on the output. Standard CTCSS (50 tones, 67.0-254.1 Hz) and DCS (104 codes) encode/decode, with split-tone support for link repeaters. DTMF keypad encode for the rare autopatch.

3.2 FM broadcast receive — 65-108 MHz

Toggle with the dedicated front-panel button. Audio is mono through the speaker; the speaker-mic jack gives stereo into earbuds via the standard 2-pin-to-3.5mm cable. No RDS, no station-name scan. It works as a portable FM radio; that’s the feature set.

3.3 Memory and VFO

128 memory channels, flat list (no zones, no banks). Each stores: TX freq, RX freq (or offset + direction), CTCSS/DCS encode + decode tones, power level (high/mid/low), wide/narrow FM, scan-list flag, busy-channel-lockout flag, and a 6-character alphanumeric name (verify char count for the firmware in your radio — TBD with Jeff). 128 slots is generous for typical local operation, tight for a national codeplug. VFO mode tunes any frequency directly via keypad — useful for temporary frequencies not worth a memory slot.

3.4 What it doesn’t do

No cross-band repeat. The VX-8DR doesn’t either; the AnyTone D878 does. If you need to extend HT coverage via a vehicle-mounted repeater, look elsewhere.
No simultaneous dual-receive. The dual-VFO display is alternating-watch, not true simultaneous reception (which requires two separate receivers).
No native APRS or packet. External-TNC coupling through the speaker-mic jack works as a documented kludge — fragile audio coupling, finicky PTT/COS keying. The VX-8DR has internal APRS; the F8HP does not.
No digital voice (DMR, D-STAR, C4FM, NXDN, P25). For DMR, use the AnyTone D878UVII (Vol 5) or the hotspots (Vols 18-19).
No SSB, no AM aircraft RX (108-137 MHz is not received).

VOX is supported, 10 sensitivity levels, default off (it’s hostile to repeater operators when ambient noise keys the radio inadvertently). Priority scan and busy-channel-lockout are standard.

4. Programming workflow

The F8HP is unusable as a daily-driver radio without a codeplug — you do not want to manually keypad-program 50 repeater pairs with their CTCSS tones. The programming workflow is the most important operational topic in this volume.

4.1 The cable

The F8HP uses the Baofeng USB programming cable — the universal Kenwood-K1-compatible 2-pin connector. Three USB-to-serial chipsets ship inside the cable shell: genuine FTDI FT232RL (gold standard, plug-and-play across OSes, ~$20-25 from BaofengTech), WinChipHead CH340 ($8-12 clone option, fine with the CH340 driver installed), and Prolific PL2303 (genuine PL2303HXD works; clones cause years of Windows driver grief — Prolific’s driver actively detects and refuses counterfeits). Practical recommendation: BaofengTech-branded cable with genuine FTDI. The $15 premium over a no-name CH340 saves hours of driver troubleshooting. The same cable fits the VX-8 series and UV-5R/UV-B5 family — Kenwood K1 is the most common HT programming connector in the world.

4.2 The software — CHIRP is the answer

CHIRP is the universal cross-vendor programming tool — free, open-source, cross-platform, and the practical choice for the F8HP. The Baofeng vendor CPS exists (Windows-only) but nearly nobody uses it; CHIRP is more polished, more reliable, and supports far more models. The CHIRP F8HP driver is mature; the codeplug maps 1:1 to the radio’s flat 128-channel memory plus a settings page.

The workflow: install CHIRP from https://chirpmyradio.com (the latest daily-build; older CHIRP pre-2018 only knew about the UV-5R 5W class and caps F8HP max power at 5W — if CHIRP shows max 5W, your CHIRP is too old). Connect cable to radio (radio off), plug USB into computer, power the radio on. CHIRP → Radio → Download: model Baofeng → BF-F8HP, port = the COM/tty assigned by the OS, baud-rate auto-detect. Read takes ~30-60 seconds. The codeplug appears as a spreadsheet of 128 channels with the usual columns. Edit (most useful pattern: paste a .csv export from RadioReference), save .img + .csv to disk, then Radio → Upload to radio (~60-90 seconds).

Critical: do not unplug, power-cycle, or close CHIRP during upload. Interrupting can corrupt the radio’s calibration tables — the radio still TXes and RXes but reference oscillator and power levels drift outside spec. Recovery requires the service-menu procedure (§7.5). For the cross-software view — CHIRP vs vendor CPS vs RT Systems vs FreeScan vs Sentinel vs ProScan — see Vol 21 (Programming software landscape).

4.3 The codeplug structure

CHIRP’s view of the F8HP codeplug is a 128-row flat list. Each row carries: Loc (1-128), Frequency (RX), Name (6-char alphanumeric — verify on actual firmware, TBD with Jeff), Tone Mode (None/Tone/TSQL/DTCS/Cross), Tone and tSQL (Hz), DTCS Code + polarity, Duplex (+/-/split/blank), Offset (MHz; typically 0.600 on 2 m, 5.000 on 70 cm), Mode (NFM/FM), Power (High/Mid/Low), Skip (scan flag), and a freeform CHIRP-only Comment. For full repeater pairs: Frequency is the RX (output), Duplex is + or -, Offset is the standard band offset, and Tone Mode + Tone carries the access tone. CHIRP’s “Repeater Book” plugin auto-fills this from repeaterbook.com by zip code — handy for first-time codeplug builds.

The 128-channel limit is generous for typical operation (local repeaters + simplex calling + GMRS/MURS/marine RX for situational awareness all fits) but tight for a national codeplug. The VX-8DR’s 1000 and the D878’s 4000 make the F8HP look constrained. Plan the codeplug for the operating area, not the country.

4.4 Cross-band programming gotcha

CHIRP lets you set TX outside the amateur 144-148 / 420-450 MHz ranges — the hardware will TX into 136-174 and 400-520 MHz, including MURS, GMRS, FRS, marine VHF, and Part 90 land-mobile. The radio is not Part 90 / Part 95 certified. TX into any of those bands is a type-acceptance violation even with the right license. The pragmatic posture: RX anywhere in the tuning range (legal almost everywhere); TX only on amateur 2 m / 70 cm. Full discussion: Vol 22.

5. Codeplug backups

The codeplug is the single most valuable artifact associated with this radio — months of accumulated repeater discoveries, tone settings, scan-list curation. Backup discipline is non-negotiable.

Two file formats: .img (full radio image, binary, ~6 KB, contains everything including calibration tables — the canonical backup) and .csv (channel-only, human-readable, editable in any spreadsheet, useful for diffing and sharing). The .img is the truth; the .csv is the documentation. Keep both, dated.

Where they live in this project: ../../programs/baofeng-f8hp/codeplugs/, dated filenames (YYYY-MM-DD-purpose.img), monthly archive. Most recent backup: TBD — verify with Jeff (next time the radio is on the bench, run a full read and date-stamp).

Cadence: download-from-radio before any edit session (captures any keypad-side changes), save the post-upload .img immediately after, plus a clean read-and-save monthly even if no edits were made (catches silent corruption from brownouts or ESD).

Restore: CHIRP → File → Open → .img → Upload to radio. Same upload caveats — don’t interrupt, don’t power-cycle. If an upload corrupts the calibration tables, the service-menu recovery procedure (MENU + power-on, then keypad 350) is documented at miklor.com — “break glass in emergency” only.

Per-radio vs per-fleet: each F8HP unit has its own calibration tables, so the .img is not perfectly portable between units. Channel data ports cleanly via .csv; the binary .img overwrite of calibration can drift the destination radio off-frequency. Safe pattern: read each radio individually, edit only the channel data, write back to the same radio.

6. Field use

The F8HP’s biggest constraint in the field isn’t the radio — it’s the stock antenna. The default rubber-duck antenna shipped with the F8HP is mediocre by any measure: roughly -3 to -5 dBi at the centre of each amateur band, with significant pattern distortion when held near the body, and noticeable bandwidth limitations at the band edges. The good news: this is trivially fixable.

6.1 The mandatory antenna upgrade

The Nagoya NA-771 (and its many clones) is the canonical Baofeng antenna upgrade — 38 cm fixed whip, SMA-Female, dual-band, ~$20-25 mid-2026. Vs. the stock antenna it delivers ~6 dB gain on 2 m (-3-5 dBi → +2-3 dBi) and ~3 dB on 70 cm (-2-3 dBi → 0-1 dBi). 6 dB on 2 m is 4× effective radiated power — far more impact than the 2 dB you got from spending the extra $20 on the F8HP over the UV-5R. A 5 W UV-5R + NA-771 will out-perform an 8 W F8HP + stock antenna on 2 m. If you bought the F8HP for the 8 W of TX, also buy the NA-771; they compound.

The NA-771 trades length for gain — 38 cm is roughly λ/4 at 146 MHz, which is the geometric reason. The radio becomes substantially less pocket-friendly. For covert carry, the stock antenna or the Diamond SRH-805S (similar trade-off, shorter length) is the compromise.

Deeper antenna theory: [Antennas Vol 9 (Portable & mobile monopoles)](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol9.md) — geometry, feedpoint impedance, DIY + Buy duality. Per-radio recommendation including the F8HP 4-tier upgrade ladder: [Antennas Vol 29 (Use-case Matrix)](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol29.md).

6.2 Mobile / vehicle deployment

For the vehicle, a dual-band NMO mag-mount (Comet SBB-1, Tram 1185, $40-60 mid-2026) on the roof gives ~3 dBi on 2 m / ~5 dBi on 70 cm plus the vehicle body as ground plane plus elevation. Connection: a few feet of RG-58 to a male-BNC or SMA on the radio end (BNC-to-SMA-F adapter for the F8HP). Long-term installs use a glass-mount (Larsen NMO-GM-150) or trunk-lip mount (Comet RS-720, Diamond K400) to avoid the magnet on paintwork. For VHF/UHF mobile antenna theory see [Antennas Vol 9](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol9.md).

6.3 Posture

The right posture for the F8HP in this lineup: backup HT in the truck (codeplugged for local repeaters, NOAA WX, 2 m / 70 cm simplex calling, and RACES/ARES/SkyWarn nets — replaceable for $80 if the truck is stolen), loaner for newcomers (cheap enough to lend for a weekend trial), and field-day spare / training radio (the radio you hand to other operators while your primary stays on your belt).

What the F8HP is not the right choice for: daily-driver HT (receive audio grates after hours, no APRS/DMR/IPX rating — use the D878 or VX-8DR); public-safety monitoring (RX bandwidth, image-rejection, and scan speed aren’t engineered for it — use a Uniden scanner, Vols 10-13); mission-critical comms (volunteer SAR, club emergency net — use the VX-8DR with IPX7 and AA tray fallback).

6.4 Battery management

8 W TX draws ~1.7-2.0 A from the 7.4 V BL-8 pack; a 2000 mAh pack delivers ~1 hour of continuous high-power TX before low-voltage cutoff. Real TX duty cycles are 5-10 %, so this rarely bites — but the rule: drop to low power (1 W) for any near-line-of-sight repeater contact. Same effective copy at 1/8th the drain; the difference between daily and weekly charging for typical use.

7. Tips and tricks

A handful of non-obvious operational notes that come up over the F8HP’s life:

7.1 If CHIRP shows max 5 W, your CHIRP is too old

The F8HP-specific 8 W power-mapping requires CHIRP to know the model. Older CHIRP versions (pre-2018, when the F8HP driver was added) read the F8HP as a generic UV-5R and clamp the max power level to 5 W. The symptom: you set a channel to “High” power expecting 8 W, the radio outputs 5 W. Fix: update CHIRP to a 2018-or-later daily-build. The radio’s hardware is unchanged; the CHIRP driver just needs to know the model to expose the right power-level enum.

7.2 Disable the DTMF “courtesy tone” at TX end

The factory-default F8HP behaviour transmits a DTMF ”*” or ”#” character at the end of every TX (a vestige of an obsolete autopatch convenience). Most modern repeaters interpret this as a stray DTMF event and either log it (annoying for the repeater operator who has to review logs) or trigger an unintended menu entry. Disable in CHIRP: Settings page → “DTMF Settings” → “PTT-Released Send” or similar (exact field name varies by CHIRP version). On the radio itself, the toggle is in the keypad menu under “DTMFST” — set to “OFF”.

This is the single most-common F8HP courtesy gripe heard at club meetings: “your radio keeps kerchunking the repeater with a DTMF tone at the end.” Disable it before the first net.

7.3 VFO-mode scan is sluggish; use memory scan with a narrowed list

Scanning all 128 memory channels takes ~10-15 seconds per pass at the F8HP’s modest ~10-channel/second scan rate; VFO-mode scanning is slower still (~3 channels/second). Prune the memory list with the “Skip” flag in CHIRP — a 15-channel scan list refreshes every 1.5 seconds, fast enough to catch most transmissions. For serious monitoring (>15 channels, or any digital trunked system), the F8HP is the wrong tool — use a Uniden SDS100 (Vol 10).

7.4 USB-PD pigtail for faster field charging

The drop-in cradle takes ~4 hours to charge a BL-8 from empty (current-limited 500 mA — cradle regulator, not battery). A USB-PD-to-12V-DC pigtail ($15 from Amazon, 5.5 × 2.1 mm barrel matching the cradle’s input) runs the cradle off any USB-C 20W+ power bank — vehicle charging without an inverter, hotel-room charging from a laptop charger. The charge rate doesn’t speed up; the input flexibility expands. For genuinely faster charging, a third-party CC/CV smart charger ($35) replaces the cradle entirely and does ~1 hour from empty.

MENU + power-on, then keypad 350 enters the F8HP service menu — factory per-band reference-oscillator calibration, TX power calibration, squelch threshold. Do not enter unless you know what you’re doing. A wrong keypress can clear the calibration tables, leaving the radio off-frequency by tens of kHz and 30-50% off-spec on power. Recovery requires either a calibration backup (which most operators don’t have) or a known-good reference unit. The miklor.com page documents the menu; BaofengTech does not.

7.6 TX outside ham bands — don’t

The F8HP hardware TXes 136-174 MHz and 400-520 MHz — far beyond the amateur 2 m / 70 cm allocations, into MURS, GMRS, FRS, marine VHF, and Part 90 land-mobile. The F8HP is not Part 95 (GMRS/FRS/MURS) or Part 90 (LMR) type-accepted. Even with the right license, the radio itself isn’t certified for those services — use a Midland MXT-500 or other Part-95-certified radio for GMRS. Full type-acceptance discussion: Vol 22 (Frequency Planning & License Envelope). The short version: TX only on amateur 2 m and 70 cm with this radio.

8. Resources

8.1 Local references

Manuals (PDF): ../manuals/baofeng-f8hp/ — F8HP_Manual.pdf and any vendor-supplied addenda. Verify file presence; TBD with Jeff.
Codeplugs: ../../programs/baofeng-f8hp/codeplugs/ — see §5 for the layout convention.
Project-level decision graph: Vol 1 §3.

8.2 Cross-cutting volumes in this series

Vol 1 (Overview) — series navigator + decision graph.
Vol 4 (Baofeng UV-B5) — sibling Baofeng model, lower-power.
Vol 21 (Programming software landscape) — CHIRP vs vendor CPS vs RT Systems vs others, the cross-radio view.
Vol 22 (Frequency planning & license envelope) — band-by-band TX authorization including the Part 95 / Part 90 type-acceptance discussion.

8.3 Cross-project (Hack Tools / Antennas) references

[Antennas Vol 5 (Transmission lines & feedlines)](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol5.md) — coax loss, connector hygiene, adapter loss budgets.
[Antennas Vol 9 (Portable & mobile monopoles)](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol9.md) — the deep treatment of rubber ducks, whips, J-poles, mag-mounts — the antenna side of every F8HP deployment scenario.
[Antennas Vol 29 (Use-case Matrix)](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol29.md) — explicit per-radio antenna recommendation including the F8HP 4-tier upgrade ladder.
[Antennas Vol 31 (Regulatory & RF Safety)](../../../Hack Tools/Antennas/02-inputs/volume_sources/vol31.md) — Part 97 envelope, ERP/EIRP, OET-65 MPE.

8.4 Vendor and community

BaofengTech product page (US distributor): https://baofengtech.com — official spec sheet, drivers, firmware notes (when published; BaofengTech updates infrequently).
CHIRP project: https://chirpmyradio.com — download, install instructions per OS, and the Baofeng driver maintainer’s notes.
CHIRP Baofeng wiki entry: https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Baofeng_UV-5R — the wiki page covers UV-5R, BF-F8, BF-F8+, and BF-F8HP collectively; the F8HP-specific notes are in the latter sections.
Miklor BF-F8HP / UV-5R community reference: https://www.miklor.com/uv5r/UV5R-PowerOutput.php — Mike Brown KK4UB’s long-running community reference, including the F8HP power-output measurements, service-menu documentation, and firmware-version-to-behaviour mapping. The most operationally-useful third-party reference for any UV-5R-family radio.
RadioReference (frequency database): https://www.radioreference.com — local repeater coordinates, talkgroup lists for adjacent digital systems, CSV exports compatible with CHIRP.
ARRL Repeater Directory: https://www.arrl.org/repeater-directory — the printed annual is still the most reliable single-volume reference for US repeater listings.

Baofeng F8HP

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