Programming Repeater Names

[Thunderknight]

I use a mix. Mostly by the local convention. If most guys call it the "Big Mountain Repeater", I'll label it "Big Mtn"; meet you on John's 2 meter machine? "John 2M"; call you on 91 later "146.910". If the radio (LMR usually) has enough room, I'll add the freq or part of it on the end. "Big Mtn .640".

 

[N4GIX]

One of the features that I recently discovered is that if I hold down the LOW (power select) button for 2 seconds, it will toggle between the Name and Frequency display. How neat is that?

 

[kc4jgc]

Like Thunderknight, I use a mix. I have a Kenwood TH-F6A HT.

I generally use an abbreviated city name. If more than one repeater in a city, I'll add a "V", "224","U" or even part of the freq after the decimal point. Labeling my home area machines, I'll label by call sign followed by one of the above if the call is used on multiple machines.

 

[zz0468]

New to HAM radio and I was wanting opinions on how most HAMs name the local repeaters into their mobiles. What works for you what did'nt work.

What works for me is not having a hard and set rule that dictates how I format the names. Some things, like a simplex frequency, are best named as the frequency. Repeaters might get named by the club name, callsign, or site name, depending on what I think of it as.

I find that as soon as I set some hard rule on something like this, the rule ceases to work for me and I break it.

 

[zz0468]

I'll follow up with one more question.

Zones.

Do you all prefer them to be by County, ARES district, or all under one zone? Out of state repeaters will more than likely be under one zone.

I put zones in by geographic area or by route, whatever makes sense. My home area has everything in one zone. If I head to the river, I have a zone that has the repeaters I'll hit on the way to the river.

If I head up north, I have a zone with the repeaters up north.

I enter them into the zone in the order that I will encounter them in my travels, so I seldom ever have to step more than one or two channels at a time to get to the next one.

 

[NM9X]

Lots of ideas I haven't thought of here...

Since I travel between five cities each with several repeaters, I organize the repeaters into zones/areas by using the memory number in groups of ten. So my home city repeaters are set between 10-19, nearby cities are 20-29, 30-39 etc. There are some repeaters in between cities that I put in the nearby city group. Then I program the repeater call sign since they're all different. I use memories 1-9 for simplex frequencies I want to find easily.

 

[902]

I could work with either frequencies or mnemonics. I came up through ham radio starting with VFO and crystal controlled radios, so when synthesizers hit the market, the only thing we had were frequencies. The KDK FM-2015A and 2016R, and the Yaesu Memorizer were perfect examples. You knew the frequency of whatever repeater because that's all the radio would give you. So, I'm okay with those.

However, I've since started a family and now there are 6 of us, each licensed between Technician and Extra, and each into only so much of the hobby (some folks don't do the total immersion thing and only one of them will pick up the mic and start a random QSO with anyone - but we all use ham radio to stay in touch). So, the frequency display does not work for them. I suppose they could learn what my repeaters are, but if I asked them to switch to another repeater, they'd be lost, and it would be too distracting while driving. So when I go looking for a radio, I don't want one that only does frequency read-out. Now, everything I have has to be uniformly named (I've basically got my own "fleet" of mobiles and portables), so that everybody has common names to refer to things, and very simple features so that they don't get lost in the radio if they inadvertently hit the wrong button.

To that end, I've been buying Kenwood 281s and 481s (wish they made a simple dual-band radio like that) and tossing the DTMF mics, replacing them with the large LMR microphones. Then I program the last 3 letters of the call sign, the frequency band, and an R for repeater, S for simplex, or I for input. This way:

XYZ 2 R = W2XYZ's 2 meter repeater,
XYZ 4 R = W2XYZ's 440 repeater,
XYZ 2 S = the simplex talk-around to W2XYZ's repeater,
XYZ 4 I = the input side, or "reverse" of the repeater (My wife hates to change frequencies while she's driving and if she drives out of range, we can still talk if I hop over to this... or I can listen for interference on it.)
and so on.

If we are infrequent users of someone else's repeater, and will not use the repeater normally, I program in either the club name, or the call sign of the repeater.

Some frequencies, like 146.52, 52.525, 29.6. and 446 specifically, are programmed in as-is.

It seems a little complicated on the front-end, but when we go somewhere and need to chat among ourselves in separate vehicles, everyone has the same thing in front of them and we end up in the right place. Using frequencies for some family members just wouldn't register.

 

[K7MH]

Nothing says they have to be uniformly tagged as far as names go. Use whatever will indicate to you what or where the repeater is. I have a few by frequency, city name (usually smaller cities/towns), and some by the repeater group names like FIRE rptr, PSRG, even one I call 700CLUB. Whatever works for you.To shorten names, I always leave the vowels out. So for Johnson I would use JHN or JHNSN depending.