QSO App markQSO App

Learn · 7 of 7 · 4 min

What still needs a computer, and what does not

FT8 and the digital modes, programming a radio, Winlink and satellite passes: which of them a phone can do today, which want a desk, and why the line falls where it does.

The line is hardware, not software

Amateur radio grew up on desktops, and a lot of the software everybody names — WSJT-X for FT8, CHIRP for programming a radio, Gpredict for satellites, Pat for radio email — was written for one. Most of it is free and open source. So the fair question is not "why is it not on my phone" but "what actually stops it".

Almost always the answer is a wire. A browser cannot key a transmitter, and it cannot run a soundcard modem attached to one. Where a task is only arithmetic, it moves; where it needs to be physically wired to a radio, it does not, and no amount of rewriting changes that.

Two things do move the line. Web Serial lets a browser talk to a USB cable, on desktop and Android. And a fair amount of "desktop" work — pass predictions, propagation, terrain — is on the desktop only because that is where it was written.

FT8 and the digital modes

FT8 is the mode that took over the bands: fifteen-second transmissions, callsigns and grid squares and a signal report, decoded from signals far below what an ear can hear. It is how most people work the world on low power today. It is also, mechanically, a computer generating audio, a radio transmitting it, and a computer decoding what comes back.

What the cable has to do. Two jobs, and a radio may want one lead or two:

QSO App does not host any of this and does not intend to: it is somebody else's radio, somebody else's audio, and the software that does it is already free and good. What is ours is the part before and after — finding what to work, and putting the contact in your log.

Programming a radio

CHIRP reads and writes the memory channels of most handhelds over the same USB cable the radio came with. It is free, it works, and it is a Python program you install — which for somebody who has owned a radio for three days is a real wall.

This is the one place where a browser genuinely could replace a desktop program: Web Serial can drive that cable. Until it does, the site hands you the channels: Near you exports the repeaters around you as a CHIRP memory file, so the retyping is gone even if the installing is not.

Pat is free, open source, and runs on every desktop; it even serves its own phone-friendly page — on the machine it is running on. Its job is email over radio, and the modes that carry it (VARA, ARDOP, PACTOR, AX.25) all need a sound card wired to a radio, which puts it on the far side of the line.

Its telnet mode needs no radio at all, only an internet connection and a Winlink account. What QSO App does today is the part that is genuinely ours: drafting the message and the ICS-213 form, then handing it to Pat.

Satellites

This one moved. Predicting when a satellite crosses your sky is arithmetic over public orbital elements — no radio, no cable, nothing to install — so the site does it: [when a satellite crosses your sky](/first-contact/satellites) gives the next day's passes with the two frequencies and the tone that go in the radio. Gpredict is still the better tool if you are pointing a rotator; for "when do I go outside", a page is enough.

Contest logging

Serious contest logging — N1MM+, DXLog and the rest — is a desk job and is likely to stay one: two screens, a real keyboard, a radio wired in, and a thousand contacts in a weekend. Nothing here pretends otherwise.

What this means for you

If you are new, none of this is in the way. A first contact needs a handheld and a repeater, and nothing on this page. Come back when you want to hear the world on five watts — that is FT8, and it is worth the cable.

← Licences, callsigns and "Sign in with callsign"Start First Contact