Baofengs and Repeaters

A friend was explaining to me how they manually program their Baofeng (which they read in the manual) and it seemed counterintuitive to me. Maybe its because I've always done it a different way, or maybe this way is just easier to remember. Regardless, here is the method that I use and that I find to be quicker, and more intuitive. Your milage may vary.

Rather than setting up the repeater output, and then going through the menus to set the offset, direction, tone, etc. I simply enter it as a 'split' channel.

Notes: 

• I'm using a Baofeng BF-F8 series radio but I have tested this on various flavors of the UV-5R. Although the menu numbers are not always the same, the process works.
• For this example, I'm setting channel 110 to use a local repeater: 145.170 (-), tone 123.0

Step 1: put the radio into VFO mode

Step 2: enter the OUTPUT frequency of the repeater (ex. 145.170)

Step 3: set the tone (ex. Menu #13, 123.0)

Step 4: save to memory channel (ex. Menu #27, 110)

Step 5: return to VFO mode

Step 6: enter the INPUT frequency of the repeater (ex. 144.570)

Step 7: save to the SAME channel as in Step 4 (ex. 110)

At this point, the channel is programmed. The "+-" indicates that its a 'split' channel: receiving on one frequency and transmitting on another

Pressing the "*" button will reverse the channel, showing "CT" on the left to indicate a tone is present and displaying the transmit frequency for the channel.