Welcome to RR.com,
sfunkman.
WOW! Nothing like jumping into a new hobby with both feet and more. One thing, you went to one of the top-of-the-line scanners to get started on. Unfortunately, it isn't easy to explain how things work. It is going to take a lot of studying on your part. Remember, anything in blue and underlined is a link to more information.
Programming is a relatively simple task if you have programming software to help you along. Software can help you program manually or if you get a
Premium Subscription then the software will do most of the work for you.
Read the documentation that came with your scanner and load the drivers for the USB cable so your computer can "talk" to your scanner. Make sure you load the drivers BEFORE you connect the cable to your computer. Don't worry about doing that until you have some software to use. It is actually the software that allows your computer to talk to the scanner. (Kind of an over-simplified way of putting it.)
There are three different "flavors" of programming software for the 500:
- WIN500 (My personal favorite)
- PSREdit500
- ARC Software by Butel
There is a 30-day free trial period with all of the software so you can select the one that best suits your needs. If you should choose WIN500, you will find
an illustrated "tutorial" at UtahRadio.org. That "tutorial" is geared for people with a Premium Membership, but can also help you in programming using WIN500 without the Premium Membership.
There are
easy-to-follow shortcuts by RR member fmon that you can use to program the 500 without having any software.
You are going to have a lot of questions and the folks on this Web site are all ready, willing, and capable of answering your questions, but you will have to help us by giving enough information that we can understand the issues you are having.
One thing right away is your location. Many of the questions you will have, and their answers, are going to be location specific and without having your location showing you will be asked over and over again what it is. Using your
User Name for a location does no good at all. So I urge you to return to your
User CP (the left side of the second blue bar from the top of any page if you are logged in) and edit your profile to include your location (
city and state) as you were requested to do in the material e-mailed to you when you registered. Once you fill in your location it will automatically show in each of your posts. So fill it in now and be done with it.
Again, welcome to RR.com.