newbie programing a new radio

c_b_mazur

Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2012
Messages
19
Location
Iowa
I know the primary answer to the question is going to be different for every location. What I am asking is, have you as an experienced ham, come across an absolute must have frequency that you have discovered and want to share. I know being here in NW Iowa I won't be able to get your primary channel up there in the PNW or hit that NYC repeater chat. But what have you discovered in your travels and elder knowledge to be a must have in a radio. Mind you I do have the National 70cm and 2m call channels programed. But I am sure I have overlooked something. I have also added Local repeaters, slightly further repeaters, The ISS, Local Dispatch frequencies to monitor, 90+ mile repeaters, and the national storm chase freq, and some odd ball frequencies that I utilize. Just kind of looking for those gems now.
 

KQ4ZVY

Newbie
Joined
Jan 14, 2025
Messages
3
If your radio lets you do something like scan for activity between two memory frequencies, it might be useful to look up the edges of your region's band agreement for repeaters and store those.
 

jjhendo

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2021
Messages
44
Location
Eagan, MN, US&A
I know the primary answer to the question is going to be different for every location. What I am asking is, have you as an experienced ham, come across an absolute must have frequency that you have discovered and want to share. I know being here in NW Iowa I won't be able to get your primary channel up there in the PNW or hit that NYC repeater chat. But what have you discovered in your travels and elder knowledge to be a must have in a radio. Mind you I do have the National 70cm and 2m call channels programed. But I am sure I have overlooked something. I have also added Local repeaters, slightly further repeaters, The ISS, Local Dispatch frequencies to monitor, 90+ mile repeaters, and the national storm chase freq, and some odd ball frequencies that I utilize. Just kind of looking for those gems now.
FRS/GMRS/MURS?
 

K7MH

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
101
When traveling, I just scan the 2 or 440 FM frequency range in "programmed scanning". Mostly I program just the freq range that the repeaters are in. There are just far too many repeaters out there to program them all and you can never know in any given area what repeater frequencies are (along with the various tones they may use) commonly in use or just what is active enough to bother with.

I scan about 55 programmed frequencies here in Seattle in the evening. There is regular activity on only 3 or 4 of those repeaters, mostly evening nets. This isn't the 70s when there were busy repeaters all day long!!
 
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