roc54

Greetings! New to the forum. I've had my GMRS license for about 9 months and I'm also an amateur radio operator. I recently purchased a Wouxun KG-805G HT, which is Part 95 type accepted for GMRS. It comes pre-programmed with the GMRS channels, including the repeater channels. The repeater channels are identified by number and repeater designation ("RPT20", for example). This makes things a bit unwieldy, because you have to remember the channel number and its relationship to the repeater frequencies you wish to use and then you have to manually go in and set the CTCSS or DCS tones every time you use that channel for a different repeater. Mostly out of curiosity, I checked CHIRP to see if I could identify other unprogrammed channels in the radio. My objective was to program specific repeaters and their tones and names in those unprogrammed channels, if they existed. I found that CHIRP does not identify the KG-805G as a radio which it can program; however, I also found that if you use the program for the Wouxun KG-816, it does, in fact, allow the uploading and downloading of data from and to the radio. Doing so revealed that the KG-805G has quite a few unprogrammed channels. I put in my favorite GMRS repeaters into the CHIRP programming matrix and then successfully uploaded them to the KG-805G. I also stopped scanning on the pre-programmed channels in the radio and allowed scanning on the channels I had programmed, so now I can scan my favorite repeaters. This may already be known to other KG-805G users, but I thought I'd put it on here in case someone didn't know. Incidentally, I really like the radio.