Part of our Getting On The Air: Modes, Operations, and Making Contacts guide.
RT Systems is commercial radio programming software, sold per radio model rather than as one universal application, and it is what I run for programming most of the radios in my shack and Jeep. It is not free like CHIRP, but for the radios it supports well, the polish and the extra features it adds are worth the price to me. That said, it is not my pick for every radio I own, and DMR is where I part ways with it.
What RT Systems gets right
The two features I lean on most are repeater import and cross-radio copying. RT Systems can pull repeater listings straight in rather than making me hand type frequencies, offsets, and tones one at a time, which turns setting up a new area’s repeaters into a few minutes of work instead of an evening. It also lets me copy programming between different radios, so once I have a solid channel list built on one radio, getting that same list onto another one does not mean starting from scratch.
That copy-between-radios ability matters more than it sounds like it should. Between the shack and the Jeep I am running several different radios that all need largely the same channel list, and rebuilding that list by hand on each one is exactly the kind of tedious work I would rather automate away.
Where I run it
RT Systems handles programming for my radios without complaint, and I use it that way across most of my station. It is a straightforward, reliable tool for building and maintaining memory channels on radios where the programming task is fundamentally about frequencies, offsets, tones, and names, which covers the bulk of what I actually need to do day to day.
Radios I’ve Bought RT Systems For
I have bought RT Systems programming software for the following radios:
- AnyTone AT-D578
- AnyTone AT-D878
- BTech DMR-6X2
- Yaesu FT-5D
- Yaesu FTX-1
- Radioddity GM-30Plus
- BTech GMRS-V1
- Icom IC-2730
- Wouxun KG-1000G
- Wouxun KG-935G
- Wouxun KG-UV9G
- Wouxun KG-UV9P
- Kenwood TH-D75
- Baofeng UV-5R
- Rugged Radios V3
Where it falls short: AnyTone DMR
I also have RT Systems software for my AnyTone DMR radios, but I do not like using it there. DMR programming is not just channels, it is contacts, talkgroups, zones, and receive group lists all interacting with each other, and that is a different kind of complexity than analog memory channels. RT Systems supports it, but for DMR specifically I get better results going straight to the manufacturer’s own CPS instead.
The manufacturer software is built directly around that radio’s own DMR feature set, so new firmware features and quirks tend to show up there first, and the workflow matches how the radio’s menus actually think about contacts and zones. For DMR, I would rather deal with AnyTone’s own CPS than fight a third party layer on top of it.
My bottom line
For analog programming, RT Systems earns its spot in my toolkit. Repeater import and cross-radio copying save real time, and I would not want to go back to programming each radio by hand. For DMR, I skip it and go straight to the manufacturer’s codeplug software instead. Same principle either way: use the tool that matches how the radio actually thinks about its own configuration, not just whichever tool happens to be already open.
If you are on a budget or need a single tool that spans handhelds from multiple brands, see CHIRP: Free Programming Software for Your Handheld Radio. For building out your first DMR configuration the manufacturer software way, see Building Your First DMR Codeplug.