Simply run your Repeater Book app.
It should connect over Bluetooth.
Connected. It will use your location.
And all you got to do is click the
frequency that you want to go to for a
repeater. So, here's Knott's Berry Farm
in beautiful Buena Park, California.
Kilo India 6 November Alpha Zulu. Just
checking I can hit the repeater.
And that's all there is to it. This will
track where you're at at all times
assuming you have a GPS connection and
connection over data and then you can
simply click to join whichever repeaters
you want in your area and you're good to
go.
For as long as I've been a ham, you
always have had to program your radios.
You'd go into the memories, make sure
that you have the appropriate repeater
set, and then you could talk on that
repeater. And then you use the scan to
go through your memory channels. It was
a process. You bought software like RT
Systems or you use software like Chirp
to be able to define it. And a lot of it
was driven from RepeaterBook.
RepeaterBook is a website you can go to.
The link is in the video description.
But RepeaterBook recently added
RepeaterBook Connect. And what this
allows you to do is yes, for a price of
$15 a year, you can try this out if you
want, it will allow you to select a
repeater from your from your app and
have it automatically transposed over to
your radio assuming you have some kind
of a wireless connection. In this case
for the Icom 5200,
it's over Bluetooth. Supported radios
are almost all of the Icom radios that
are available today assuming you have
Bluetooth capability. And a lot of them
require an actual interface that you
have to buy.
If you have a 52 Plus or a 705, then
you're good to go. The new 5200 as well
has this capability built in, but it's
not fully configured on the app yet. So,
I'm going to show you how to set this up
and run. However, once it gets updated,
you're going to want to set this back so
that you can get back to normal 5200
capability. But, let's show you how it's
done. It's pretty easy. If running this
for the first time, all you're going to
do is run Repeater Book. You're going to
see likely this screen open up with your
local repeater options. It's going to
use your location, so make sure you do
turn on whatever GPS you need to or give
access to it on your phone. Then hit
connect Bluetooth low energy, and it's
going to say not found for a second, and
then it should pop up, and it sees a
5200, which is perfect, but this app
doesn't understand 5200s yet. So, it's
going to try to connect, but nothing
happened. Why is that? Well, let's go
into settings.
We'll go down to Bluetooth set, which is
pretty low down the set menu.
We'll go to pairing and connect, and you
can see it's it's not there yet. So,
what happened? Well, we got to put it
into pairing reception. So, let's do
that again. I'll hit pairing reception,
and then I'll go connect Bluetooth low
energy,
and we'll click it.
And it says it's connected. That's
really all you have to do on the app
side.
But, we got to do a little change on the
radio itself, and the app will guide you
how to do it. If you go to the hamburger
menu, and you go to settings, you go
down to your radio, you want to make
sure that 5100 is selected, and then
click the little question mark.
And what it's going to tell you is
exactly the CI-V address you need to
use. The default for the 5200 is not
eight Charlie. So, what we got to do is
go back into connectors,
onto CI-V, and then under address,
whatever it says, you need to make it
eight Charlie, and then it'll add the H
there for you. So, just make it eight
Charlie.
Then you're all done. That's all you
have to do. So, now you go back, back.
We're still connected.
Exit out,
and then we should just be able to
change frequencies to our heart's
content.
This also adds the capability to have a
map. You can zoom out and you can see
repeaters in the area. And all you have
to do is click them and it will change
automatically based off of your map
location. And you can see it's it's
really quite fast. So for example,
Santiago has a lot of repeaters of
activity here. So we can
jam around and find something that is
working out there.
Now for some added control, if you go to
the kind of arrow down looking hamburger
menu, you can change this for distance.
You can sort by distance. You can change
from different bands of operation. So if
you're using this on a 705 for example,
that'll work too. You can change
frequencies to say a 6 meter repeater or
10 meter repeater. Those are real
things. You can also click D-Star. So
let's undo FM, go to D-Star. And then
what does that give us? Oh yeah, there's
one. So let's see if we can hit it.
Not from here, but what about HRO?
Yeah. So we just connected to HRO. And
if we wanted to, we could go into the DR
settings and change that too. But yeah,
we got a couple around here. Not a ton.
You can also organize these into groups.
So if you'd like something like uh a
Races group or Aries,
create. Now I have an Aries group, but
it's it's empty. Cerritos, also that's
my local town. Group one, also empty. So
you go to nearby. Well, let's see. What
would be uh
we'll go with this Pomona one. I'll
click star and then I can select which
group it's going to go into. So let's
say this goes into my Aries group. I can
simply click it and now if I go to
Aries, there it is. And if I click it,
boom, it switches over. These are all
still filtered on D-Star, I think. So
what if we want to do both? So we'll do
that. And hey, it's got fusion and
everything else in here. So, you have
capabilities regardless of the radio of
operation cuz this is repeater book and
you'd expect that. So, my local one is
this Cypress location. So, I'll add that
to Cerritos as well as the Buena Park
one for Knott's Berry Farm. La Mirada
also is very local. And so, I could add
group sets for different places I
travel. So, I work down in Irvine. So, I
can go ahead and do that as well.
Let's delete this group. I don't need
that. But now I can jump between
Cerritos and Irvine when I'm at home or
nearby, when I'm traveling around and I
can add to my list as I go. But you may
thinking yourself, "Well, Josh, what
does that means I got to have my phone
with me at all time so I can switch
quickly to the Knott's Berry Farm
repeater?" Well, you can of course then
add this to your radio. And now once we
have Buena Park here for Knott's Berry
Farm selected, I want to add it to the
memory for my radio. All I have to do is
click on this. I'm in VFO mode, but if I
click on it, it will give me this
option. VFO, MR, call, DR, weather. I
can just hit MW for memory write.
Write to new channel. And sure, let's go
with that one. We'll select slot two.
Now if I hit MR,
there it is. That is the Buena Park
repeater. So, an interesting feature is
you begin to flush out your repeater set
and you start driving around with your
radio.
Let's say you have an in VFO mode, which
just means you can you can tune the
radio with the dial. Hit scan. And then
we'll keep it within the 2-meter band.
Well, we got one here. It's 147.205.
And so, I typed in 20 and it gave me the
closest one was 417 mi away. That's
obviously not this. So, you got to you
got to play with the frequency a little
bit. So, if I go one more,
I was scanning up. So, I'm going to go
up in frequency to 210. Well, let Let
change that to 210.
And there's a free There's a frequency,
29.6,
that is an All Star repeater on Sunset
Ridge, and that is very much likely what
I'm on right now. So, I'm going to click
it. And it's added tone now.
And I should be able to key this
repeater. We'll wait for a lull in the
conversation and see if I can say hi.
>> Anyway, like I say, I'm just kind of
sitting around,
and I had that pop signal in
and oh all get out here in a little bit.
>> Oh, man.
He's doubling something crazy. I don't
know what's going on with that.
>> 2 hours later.
>> Well, that repeater definitely wasn't
dead. They were chatting for a long
time, but let's see. KI6NAZ repeater
test.
Yep. So, that worked perfectly. But
yeah, those guys are talking for a very
long time. So, there you go. I'm not
affiliated with this system at all, but
I really like the concept of it, and
that you can kind of power through
eventually programming your radios
without too much fuss. It makes using it
more simple, cuz if you're driving
around in your car, you can just tap to
where you're going or where you're at,
and you're scanning around, you can find
the thing, you can add it to a group
pretty easy. So, hey, check it out. What
is it? A little over a buck a month?
That's not bad. Uh repeater membership
seems insane to me that we're in this
day and age, but it's convenient, and
they have a good app for integration.
Again, you have to be using one of these
Icom radios and have the appropriate
Bluetooth interface to make this work.
But other than that, it's pretty cool. I
think it's pretty cool. There are other
ways to do this, too. This is just me
showing one way, you know? It's $4 and
cents, and I know that makes hams angry,
but this is convenient as as all get
out. And so, often time, I will pay a
dollar a month if you make my life
easier. So, there you go. I'm Josh,
KI6NAZ. Thanks so much for watching the
new beautiful Icom 5200
7.
Copy that. I'm hearing you duped as
well. I was listening earlier when you
were talking with that other station and
they were not duplicated. So, I'm
wondering given that I'm coming in
through what looks like the Sunset Ridge
uh repeater. No, I take that back. I'm
coming in through a different repeater.
Um but yeah, that that might be why. No,
it is a Sunset Ridge. It's K A6 win. So,
I think that might be the problem the
way they have this repeater configured.
So, anyway, I'll hop off here, but
anyway, thanks for coming back to me.
Kilo India 6 November Alpha Zulu. Thank
you so much.
>> What do you sell them for five zeros?
>> Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Oh my god, I'm out of here.
>> Jesus Christ.
>> That was crazy.
>> going in either of your transmissions.
He sounds perfect out here on the Loma
Prieta.
>> And he's fine.
>> This is in 5 USK.
Watsonville.
>> Watsonville.
All right.
>> And 5 USK.
>> No, my god, he's back.
>> Mhm.