[cdjk]

I've tried using commercial radios before, but the biggest annoyance is the difficulty in either 1) getting programming software and 2) actually using the software, which usually has an atrocious UI.

At least with a purpose-built ham radio you can enter frequencies directly on the handset, even if it's a pain. Although the programming software for them is almost as bad.

[twothamendment]

I heard bad things about programming the Baofeng and other cheap radios so picked one up before getting blessed by the FCC to operate it. I figured if it was a pain I didn't care about passing some test.

It was a pretty straight forward process. I bought a decent cable to plug it in to my laptop, downloaded CHIRP (http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home) and used it to pull in a list of local repeaters, selected the ones I wanted and dumped the list to the radio.

There was one issue of confusion, maybe this will help someone. The order is important. I've never failed if I: 0) Remove the antenna 1) Plug in the cable to the computer 2) Plug in the cable to the radio 3) Turn the radio on - all the way, full volume Then CHIRP will happily download or upload profiles from the radio.

The UV-82 manual is decent. I'm guessing it is the older models that people talk about. There are some funny translations here and there, but I don't recall anything that didn't work or make sense. Programming them by hand is still no fun. Thank you everyone who works on CHIRP!