soemand

My V/UHF ham radio chirp setup.

While I have posted my recipe for naming my channels, in the past thought I’d share how I’ve programmed the channels on my kenwood ht, for the interested.

The kenwood has a group scan feature , where it will only scan the grouping of 100 channels at a time. So channels 0–99 is one group, 100–199 a second group, etc…

So what I’ve done is map the channels based on use. 0–99 is relegated to my hometown, 100–199 to my province, 200–299 to another nearby province.

My hometown channels include all the repeaters I can reach from my desk. There are 8 repeaters, and includes also simplex calling frequencies:

• Ham 52 – 146.520
• Ham 55 – 146.550
• Ham 46 – 446.000

These three calling frequencies all copied into the other groups.

It is pretty simple, then the Provincial group is Provincial Repeaters + Calling etc…

I have placed a ‘skip’ on a few repeater channels that are either noisy, or boring. If you’ve been on the air, you all know about Frank’s gallbladder surgery.

So depending where I am located, I have the “A Band“ of my HT scanning the group that best matches where I am situated. The “B Band“ is my working channel; and I tune by memory to which repeater I wish to talk to.

This way, I’ve managed to have multiple qso(s) per day with the local hams; and keep an ear out to anyone looking to have a quick chat. Previously I would have stayed on just one freq; and missed quite a few folks.

The final group I have is a selection of marine frequencies; {12, 16, 71, 72, 77} that I peek into. The radio can’t transmit on those, but it is nice to listen in every once and a while.