How do you organize your memories?

[FJ-Piper]

I'm curious, how does everyone else organize the Alpha Numeric names of your repeaters, favorite freq's, etc in your radios?

Currently I'm doing this:

County Abbreviation : Repeater abbreviation e.g. SBD:BgBrL for San Bernardino Big Bear Lake or OC:SantPk for Orange County Santiago Peak

[Frogeye]

God what a great topic. My mems are so bastardized. It's a mess. I just have everything lumped together with names for the freqs.

[sdnative]

I haven't found a good way to do this.

I first tried the name plus a unique suffix, such as otay1, otay2, etc. But that's on 2m and I wasn't sure how to combine that with the otay repeaters on 70cm.

After my memory got wiped out for whatever reason, I just used the frequency as the memory name. Seems to work a lot better as I have most of my regulars memorized (no pun intended..) Of course you have to keep the repeater directory close at hand...

I would be very interested to see how others do this, as this has been a major challenge.

A related topic is how do you program your radio? By hand? Software? I purchased one of those USB to data port cables, but dont have any software yet. I tried to purchase the FTB8800 software, but the amount of information I had to give out, and the hoops they wanted me to jump through just made me throw up my hands and walk away... Just not worth it for an $18 piece of software. I dont care how good it is.

[taugust]

I have programmed and reprogrammed several times. I started out geographically. Palomar, Mt Laguna, Lyons, Otay, etc. I found that I used certain repeaters more than others, so I began to group them together so that they were just a click or two away from each other. The most used ones are a the lowest memory locations. I have a club simplex freq., then my most often used repeaters, then some simplex, then out of area repeaters. Other than the club simplex, I don't name the repeaters. This way they are always displayed and you learn which freq is where. I have a large group of them in one bank, which groups them together, no matter what memory location they are in. I have excluded noisy or never used freqs from the bank. When I first started out, I would scan the main bank, to find active repeaters, and listen to the QSO (conversation). Sometimes I would break in and add something.

What I did to organize everything, is created a cheat sheet. I created a spreadsheet in Quattro Pro (my preference) that could fit on a letter size sheet width. Each memory location is on its own row. Columns are:
Memory, Frequency, Identification, Bank, Notes.

Memory and Frequency are self evident. Identification included location or owner, offset direction, and PL tone. Bank was just the bank letter. Notes were about location, what nets were on, etc. When the scan would stop on an active freq., I could look it up to find out where it was, until I got to know it. The advantage to this system is that you carry it with you in the vehicle, so you can always refer to it. If something changes, change the spreadsheet and print a new copy. Here is a sample of how it looks

4 147.030 Palomar Mountain Repeater +, Tone 103.5 A ECRA 5600'
5 146.730 Palomar Mountain Repeater -, Tone 107.2 A Very Active
6 146.640 Otay Mountain Repeater -, Tone 107.2 A
7 147.240 Monument Peak Repeater +, Tone 103.5 A Desert Coverage, CALZONA Link
8 146.265 Lyons Peak Repeater +, Tone 107.2 A
9 146.520 National Simplex A
10 147.075 Palomar Mountain Repeater +, Tone 107.2 A
11 147.130 Palomar Mountain Repeater +, Tone 107.2 A
12 146.670 Superstition Mountain Repeater -, Tone 103.5 Desert Coverage
13 147.120 Black Mountain Repeater +, Tone 103.5 A Desert Coverage, CALZONA Link
14 146.535 Simplex
15 146.550 Simplex

In print,everything is nicely aligned. Another advantage is that you have everything needed to reprogram your radio if something goes wrong, or to give to a friend to program his. Over time, I have edited to remove errors and fix changes. For instance, Keller Peak used to receive on 146.985 and transmit on 146.385.

It is a good idea to have every repeater in the county programmed into your radio, even if you don't use them. In a disaster, you won't have time to program and your primary repeaters may be down. This way is easy to find a usable repeater when you need one. I have some Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside repeaters as well, since I go wheeling there occasionally. If you use an area, program all the repeaters in the area.

Hope this helps.