Using chirp to program Baofeng.

Just purchased 2 Baofeng UV-5R for my girl and me. I am very new to this and these are the first Ham radios I have ever purchased. Everything I've read said chirp is the way to go to program them. I live in Southwest Florida and purchase them for emergencies and as a starting point in ham as a hobby. My question is being very new at this is chirp easy to use for someone who has no clue about Ham radios yet?

 

@Tjb61
I noticed that this is your first post here on the Monkey.
Please introduce yourself by creating a post in the thread New Member Introductions

I'm sure that our resident experts will be along shortly to help you. That said, You can use our site search to find out more about all kinds of comms.

 

Yes, CHIRP is extremely easy to use, it's free (as you undoubtably know) and for the BAOFENGs, it's certainly what I would recommend. I got four Baofengs (maybe more) and it really is an excellent radio to start learning. The Baofeng radio is a PITA to program without some sort of software, unless you got the patience of a rock. CHIRP allows not only making the programming much, much easier, but saving a copy of your settings so it is ready to change if you made a mistake or want to edit them in the future. It simply is really the only method to handle the Baofengs.

EDIT: Let's us know if you need any help or got a question on using CHIRP.

QUESTION: Have you taken the exam to get your Technician license yet or know where and when you can test? Look at HAM STUDY, link below, to help you study. It's free, simply have to make an account but they do not harass or spam you for anything, practice tests are excellent and free and it tracks the incorrect answers and places them in future tests. It also has an excellent FLASH CARD study where it not only tells you the correct answer but tells you WHY it is correct in plain language. It should take you about 2 weeks to be ready if you do about 30 minutes per day.

HamStudy.org: Cutting edge amateur radio study tools