CHIRP

CHIRP is a free, open-source tool for programming frequencies and settings into your amateur radio. It supports a large number of make and models.

It is really easy to use and makes it extremely simple to copy frequencies between different radios (of different makes). Not all radios are supported by CHIRP however, so it's a good idea to make sure CHIRP can program a specific radio before buying it.

See the Radio Programming page to download VA7FI's Chirp list.

Baofeng radios can be a bit tricky to program with CHRIP the first time around because of the Windows Driver. If you're trying to use CHIRP on Windows with a Baofeng radio, see this page first.

Now that the appropriate drivers are installed:

1. Connect your radio to your computer and open CHIRP.
2. Under Radio, select Download From Radio:
3. Select the right Port (which is probably wrong by default), Vendor and Model and press ok. It's good to download what's already on your radio even if you don't have anything because in addition to frequencies, it also downloads settings specific to your radio.
4. Before you go and program frequencies, have a look at the Settings to see if you can configure anything there. See below for screenshots of VA7FI's Baofeng settings:
5. To enter frequencies, you can either type them manually, or copy and paste from another CHIRP file. Never upload someone else's CHIRP file directly though because the radios might have different firmware that can cause issues. It's pretty easy to open a second CHIRP file in a second tab, and copy and paste the frequencies you want into your tab. See VA7FI's CHIRP files for example.

1. I have successfully installed Chirp-Next on Linux Mint without any issues following these instructions.
2. And then added my username to the dialout user to be able to write to the radio:

   sudo usermod -aG dialout YOURUSERNAME