Friday, August 23, 2019

PSKReporter could replace WSPRnet

WSPRnet is a great service but frustratingly it's sometimes slow or down. Recently I've discovered that the PSKReporter site provides a similar service and seems to be very reliable. WSJT-X can be set to send reception reports to it very easily and you get a map view like this:


This shows FT8 reception by me here in Sydney on 40m. To enable reporting back to PSKReporter, go to settings and just turn it on.


The site's domain name is PSKReporter but it's much more flexible than that and currently lists a huge number of modes:

FT4, FT8, JS8, CW, SIM31, PSK, PSK31, IFKP, OPERA, JT65, JT, JT65B, OLIVIA-4, RTTY, ROS, PI4, MSK144, OLIVIA 8, OLIVIA, JT9, FM, PSK63, SSB, PSK125, FSK441, JT4, CONTESTI, OLIVIA 4, QPSK31, OLIVIA 1, PSK62, OLIVIA-3, SSTV, WSPR, THOR11, THOR8, MFSK16, PSK32, OLIVIA 3, JT6M, SIM63, OLIVIA-1, MFSK32, THOR, THOR22, THRB, MFSK8, T10, DOMINO, MFSK4, FSQ, FAX, RTTY-45 , FREQCAL, JTMS, HELL, 8PSK125, QRA64, SSS, THOR4, THOR16, PKT, FMHELL, -FT8,

Data can be downloaded in ADIF files that look like this:

This data comes from http://PSKReporter.info 3.0.4http://pskreporter.info$Id: cgi-bin/pskdata.pl $
7.07574012703.8FT8VK2TPMQF56of6220190822021029-1VK4REAustralia150QG62jjNIL1
7.075405229245.7FT8VK2TPMQF56of6220190822031214-18VK1DCAustralia150QF44nt93NIL1

This is Amateur Data Interchange Format. Submissions from software is fully documented and they provide a library for Windows developers.

I'm really impressed with the work done on this site. A very professional job.

I've started work on adding PSKReporter to the WSPR Watch iOS app. They don't have all of the information that's on WSPRnet but enough to be useful.


There is lots of FT8 activity so it's a good data set to view.


I'll have this up on TestFlight in a few days and hopefully in the App Store soon.

No comments: