Amateur radio

Amateur radio enthusiasts (sometimes called ham radio operators or "hams") have been at the forefront of experimentation and development since the earliest days of radio. A wide variety of communication modes are used on a vast range of frequencies that span the electromagnetic spectrum. This page lists software related to amateur radio that can be found in the AUR. Some of it is stand-alone while the various digital communication applications require interfacing to radio hardware and possibly the computer soundcard. Interface hardware can be purchased from vendors or home-built.

Warning: International treaties require that users of amateur radio frequencies have a government-issued license. This only affects you if you have a transmitter and an antenna, receiving amateur radio or just downloading amateur radio software is not illegal.

General information

Many of the following programs will need to access a serial port to key the transmitter (eg. /dev/ttyS0). This requires that the user belong to the uucp group. To add the user to the uucp group issue the following command as root:

# gpasswd -a username uucp

then logoff and logon.

Software list

• Hamlib — provides an interface between hardware and radio control programs. It is a software layer to facilitate the control of radios and other hardware (eg. for logging, digital modes) and is not a stand-alone application.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/hamlib/ || hamlib

• Soundmodem — was written by Tom Sailer (HB9JNX/AE4WA) to allow a standard PC soundcard to act as a packet radio modem for use with the various AX.25 communication modes. The data rate can be as high as 9600 baud depending on the hardware and application. Soundmodem can be used as a KISS modem on the serial port or as an AX.25 network device. To use soundmodem as an MKISS network device, the kernel must be re-built with MKISS modules. More information is in the Xastir wiki

Run soundmodem as root:

# soundmodem

If you have configured soundmodem as a KISS modem, you will need to change permissions to make it user-readable:

# chmod 666 /dev/soundmodem0

https://web.archive.org/web/20130824024508/http://www.baycom.org/~tom/ham/soundmodem/ || soundmodem^AUR

• Grig — simple control program based on Hamlib

https://groundstation.sourceforge.net/grig/ || grig^AUR

• gMFSK — is a user interface that supports a multitude of digital modes. It uses hamlib and xlog for logging

http://gmfsk.connect.fi || gmfsk^AUR

• aprx — lightweight APRS digipeater and i-Gate interface

https://thelifeofkenneth.com/aprx/ || aprx^AUR

• xdx — network client

https://www.qsl.net/pg4i/linux/xdx.html || xdx^AUR

Analysis tools

• gpredict^AUR – Real-time satellite tracking and orbit prediction application
• – Small desktop display of the current solar indices
• – rf signal propagation, loss, and terrain analysis
• – Useful for predicting grayline propagation paths
• xnec2c^AUR – Electromagnetic antenna modeler

Logging

• – a popular Linux logging program
• – a Field Day Logger with networked nodes
• – a Ham radio logging program for Linux / KDE.
• – QSO Logger and log Editor for amateur radio operators written in Perl
• – a console mode networked logging and contest program
• – QSL application for ARRL's Logbook of the World
• xlog^AUR – a logging program for amateur radio operators.
• – a general purpose ham radio logbook for *nix operating systems.
• – a logbook program for ham radio contests.

Tools

• – package contains databases of entities (countries), prefixes and callsigns that are used by amateur radio logging software.
• – a small program for determining ARRL DXCC entity of a ham radio callsign

Morse code training

• gtkmmorse^AUR
• unixcw^AUR

Other

• – Send and receive Morse code messages via IRC