Wednesday, October 9, 2019

HamAlert

Spots this morning, only one
DXcluster  spot!
While I'm on and into 60m DX these days I always find it interesting that when a DX station is calling out of the blue suddenly the whole spectrum is full of signals calling the DX. I asked myself, do all these station listen or view (FT8 these days) 24/7. No, I thought....there has to be something that alerts you without even being in the radioshack!

In the past people would telephone call or SMS each other when a important DX was on. These days people use messenger and whatsapp. But still the DX cluster on the internet plays a important role. However a DX cluster still needs input from users. The Reverse Beacon Network has made things interesting as well as the input would come automatically from participating monitor station. But still, you have to view those on a screen, even with filters on. And the RBN is not working for SSB. Most times you need to be in your shack as well to get noticed by any visual or audio notification.

Callsigns programmed being known
active on 60m.
Now I found a simple solution and it works well. HamAlert is a website/Android/iOS app that can be installed on your phone or tablet. Thanks to HB9DQM Manuel who created it. The DX information is gathered from the DX Cluster, RBN, SOTAwatch and PSKreporter. It contains several possebilities in alerting and many filter options you should find out yourself. I only use the push notification on my phone but it can also notify you by e-mail. SMS is still a possebility but is not free. A nice feature is the integration with clublog for the real DXCC band slot die hard!


It's how they do it. The modern way of DXing...


4 comments:

Photon said...

Thanks for the useful info! Something else to figure out...

Peter pa4o said...

Nog niet gevonden waar mijn 06 nummer moet komen :-(

PE4BAS, Bas said...

06 nummer? Niet nodig...je moet op je telefoon berichten aanzetten. Als je een app krijgt zie je dat toch ook direct? Dat word ergens ingesteld. Aleen weet niet waar op jouw telefoon. Maar je kan het aanzetten dat je een berichtje krijgt. 73, Bas

Peter pa4o said...

Ja gewone apps krijg ik wel. Heb het Elina ook laten zien maar die vind ook niets wat ik aan moet zetten. Staat wel ergens berichten aan of uit maar die staat bij mij op aan. En op de hamalert vink ik de app aan en email. Email krijg ik wel.

Peter