There is good news for the growing base of fans for the BTech UV-2501, UV-2501 +220 and UV-5001 radios. The popular free programming tool CHIRP now supports this series.

Apparently the the volunteer programmers for the CHIRP program added support for the radios in the last two updates.

You may recall that I have been developing an emergency radio system using the UV-2501. So far it has worked well. I am hoping to get the +220 model to add next. I have been using the Baofeng program that you download for Baofeng for the unit. It is complete but complicated to use. The new CHIRP version is a real blessing.

I downloaded the latest version of CHIRP, chirp-daily-20160329, and installed it immediately. I did not do any fancy programming, but did download the memory to a file. CHIRP does not yet have a tab for the extra settings, such as welcome message and initial setting for the FM radio.

It does let you program in the frequency for a repeater and the offsets and takes care of the math for you. In the Baofeng program, you have to enter the Rx frequency and then add or subtract the offset to enter the Tx frequency. It also allows you to add 7 alpha characters for the name and transmit inhibit for scanner only channels.