Jul 4, 2015 - Have you used CHIRP or RT Systems programming software? One other programming software from ICOM, because they gave it away free.
CHIRP is a free, open-source tool for programming your amateur radio. It supports a large number of manufacturers and models, as well as provides a way to interface with multiple data sources and formats.
My DH has one he got two months ago. Mine arrived today. I've been using an older Icom that allows you to monitor 2m and 70 cm at once. We are going to use it more at home. With roof mount antennas on our vehicles, we can talk about 15 miles apart with city between us on simplex.
Yesterday, with a local repeater, I was probably 50 miles or more apart from DH and we had a nice chat while he was traveling. I've never used any other radio beside this one and the older Icom so I can't compare but I like mine. My favorite feature (which may be standard on all radios) is that I can skip memory channels while scanning. There is a local fellow that hangs out on a simplex frequency. He's nice to chat with. But, on the road to and from work (we live out of town), I can usually pick him up but not who he is talking to. It gets frustrating only getting part of a conversation.
Without the ability to skip that memory channel, my radio stops on him and a lot of times on the static I do get from who he is talking to. Since I can set it to skip that memory channel, I don't get one-sided conversations. I can just tune that memory channel in to see whose around.
I will say that tonight I will see how easy the 208H is to program. I've messed with DH's some taking out some memory channels and it wasn't bad. But I haven't programmed one yet. I'll try to remember to post what that is like to program it (if I can't find a way to clone it from DH's. I think we need a cable we don't have.).
That is probably the model which replaced the IC-7800 which I have. The 7800 is VERY HARD to navigate, memory wise. It'd be interesting to see if they cleaned that up any. I also have a Kenwood TMD-700 which is an order of magnitude easier to use. There is not a whit's worth of difference performance wise between the two within the ham bands.
More inportant is the antenna and where its mounted. I have a Diamond NR 770NMO mounted right in the middle of the roof of my Dodge 3500 dually VIA a 7/8' hole. The antenna and where its mounted make a huge performance difference. [url][What the simplex range? Take the square root of the height of the (base) of the antenna in feet above ground and multiple that by 1.414. That result is the distance from the antenna to the radio horizon.
V/r RadioKrafter. Programming it was not bad. Originally, DH and I talked about cloning mine from his but he decided since his was a little chaotic (he'd been adding repeaters in as he traveled, etc.), we'd program mine like we wanted it then clone it to DH's. We learned about Banks -- you can put any memory channels into a bank and scan only the bank. There are banks A-J. On mine, we set up Bank A with the repeaters and simplex channels we use locally, leaving out the aforementioned simplex channel that is hard to pick up outside town.
DH will possible set up his own banks for some of the routes he regularly travels so he can scan those separately. It took us over an hour to program it but that included looking up repeaters to verify DH had all the information correct for them and we put all of it in a spreadsheet so that we can refer back to it and see what's supposed to be somewhere if we mess something up. We bought ours from Gigaparts.com. They are local to Alabama so shipping was next day. We did pay tax though which can really get you. AL has high sales tax.
With the specials they had last month, I think $288 was the total with tax. Right now they have an sale to make your own offer and there's $40 off. We decided not to buy the cable at this time. Since we don't move around, except for DH's travels in-state, we can't see needed it often. It scans quickly.
Gerber omega composer software. Using crack, serial number, registration code, keygen and other warez or nulled soft is illegal (even downloading from torrent network) and could be considered as theft in your area.