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I’ve mentioned before that I find programming my radios by hand tedious and error prone. Plus, I have to get out the manual each time and study it for ~30 minutes to remember the menu paths and keying sequences for each radio.
On top of that, I have a Wouxon HT, which is programmable via a primitive Powerwerzx software that doesn’t support standard cut/paste functions. My mobile is a Kenwood, which isn’t as bad to program manually, but still isn’t friendly. I want to enter about 60 repeaters, identically to the two radios.
Here’s what I came up with:
1) Use Commander for the Wouxon and Chirp for the Kenwood. Commander is much better than the Powerwerx software I had been using. I didn’t use Chirp on both radios. Even though Chirp lists the Wouxon as supported, it kicks out all sort of warning messages when I start to use it on the Wouxon.
2) Create a master spreadsheet of the repeaters, with Number, Name, receive freq, transmit freq, offset +/- (Chirp uses offset, Commander uses transmit freq), tone, comment column for my use, etc.
3) Program with Commander (Wouxon): open it up and load current channels from the radio to Commander, export to .csv file, open .csv in Excel, retain the header row and first data row (for exact formatting). Then column by column, copy all 60 data rows from the master spreadsheet and paste into the .csv starting at row 3. Once all done with the copy/paste, use Excel format painter and copy the format from row 2 (the original first data row) and format the remaining ~60 rows. This will insure you have the entire .csv in the proper format for that radio. Delete row 2, then import the newly updated .csv to the Wouxon HT.
4) Program with Chirp. Basically do the same thing. Export a sample .csv file from the Kenwood mobile, update the .csv with data from the master spreadsheet, then import back to the mobile. Given the Kenwood is fastened into the jeep, I program it from a laptop while sitting in the jeep (I programmed the HT while sitting at a desktop).
All this took a couple hours to figure out the first time, but it won’t be as bad next time. I now have over 60 repeaters coded in identically in the two radios. I’ve saved that master spreadsheet.
Hopefully someone will find this useful (or share better techniques with all of us).
Cliff
On top of that, I have a Wouxon HT, which is programmable via a primitive Powerwerzx software that doesn’t support standard cut/paste functions. My mobile is a Kenwood, which isn’t as bad to program manually, but still isn’t friendly. I want to enter about 60 repeaters, identically to the two radios.
Here’s what I came up with:
1) Use Commander for the Wouxon and Chirp for the Kenwood. Commander is much better than the Powerwerx software I had been using. I didn’t use Chirp on both radios. Even though Chirp lists the Wouxon as supported, it kicks out all sort of warning messages when I start to use it on the Wouxon.
2) Create a master spreadsheet of the repeaters, with Number, Name, receive freq, transmit freq, offset +/- (Chirp uses offset, Commander uses transmit freq), tone, comment column for my use, etc.
3) Program with Commander (Wouxon): open it up and load current channels from the radio to Commander, export to .csv file, open .csv in Excel, retain the header row and first data row (for exact formatting). Then column by column, copy all 60 data rows from the master spreadsheet and paste into the .csv starting at row 3. Once all done with the copy/paste, use Excel format painter and copy the format from row 2 (the original first data row) and format the remaining ~60 rows. This will insure you have the entire .csv in the proper format for that radio. Delete row 2, then import the newly updated .csv to the Wouxon HT.
4) Program with Chirp. Basically do the same thing. Export a sample .csv file from the Kenwood mobile, update the .csv with data from the master spreadsheet, then import back to the mobile. Given the Kenwood is fastened into the jeep, I program it from a laptop while sitting in the jeep (I programmed the HT while sitting at a desktop).
All this took a couple hours to figure out the first time, but it won’t be as bad next time. I now have over 60 repeaters coded in identically in the two radios. I’ve saved that master spreadsheet.
Hopefully someone will find this useful (or share better techniques with all of us).
Cliff
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