While I had programmed every repeater in my local area into my IC880H before installing it in the truck, I had no idea exactly where the repeaters were located, and I discovered that I was not able to bring all of them up. I had purchased one of the small editions of the ARRL Repeater Directory to help guide me, but that wasn’t the easiest thing to use.
Yep — there’s an App for that.
Enter RFinder The Worldwide Repeater Finder. This company has a simple to use App that is available for IOS and Android devices. It isn’t free, it costs $9.95, but that includes full use of the database for a year (it can be renewed each year). Once you’ve bought the App for one device, you use your logon credentials to access the service on any device (phone/tablet/PC).
RFinder has a basic search screen that allows you to search for repeaters within a specified distance from your current location (GPS position), or any other location that you would like. You can also search for a specific machine by call sign. As you can see from the image below you can restrict your search to certain bands as well
RFinder Search Screen
Once you set your search parameters, you press the “Update List” button which fetches the data. Pressing “Show List” presents a screen like this one:
RFinder List of Repeaters
And if you press the “Map” button you will get a view that looks something like this:
RFinder Map View
I really like the map view as it plots my current location and gives me a good idea of where the machines are with respect to my location. If you touch one of the towers on your screen you will see the call sign, frequency, offset, and PL information.
The only drawback I see so far is that you have to have a live data connection on your phone for the application to work. That also means if you don’t renew the subscription you don’t retain access to your out-of-date data (unlike one of the printed guides which remains useful). But given the price (cheaper than the list price of a Repeater Guide), the fact that the data is updated constantly, and what you can do with the data, that sounds like a good trade-off to someone who is on the road with ham radio. Besides, that is one less thing I have to worry about lugging along with me as I always have my phone.
