ShackDeck
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A program for macOS and Windows: a logbook, an SDR receiver with hundreds of public receivers, decoders for FT8, FT4, WSPR, RTTY, PSK31, SSTV, CW and MSK144, weather fax, APRS, satellites, and contacts over the internet. Free.
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The logbook, the map, the stations on the air, the receiver and the waterfall. No switching between five programs.
Contacts by hand or straight from the decoder, so the log never holds a QSO you did not make. ADIF in and out, callsign lookup on QRZ.com and HamQTH, a DX cluster, worked countries and grid squares on the map, and every station you hear drawn where it is.
Public online receivers around the world, checked live and sorted by distance, with a real waterfall, a tuning knob and favourites. FT8, FT4, WSPR, RTTY, PSK31, SSTV, CW and MSK144 are decoded on the spot and land on the map.
ShackDeck users hear each other through the site: FT8, FT4, MSK144, RTTY, PSK31 and SSTV with real modulation. The band behaves like the air: 160 m only at night, the high bands open now and then, meteor pings on VHF, QSB. Contacts run by the WSJT-X rules and go into the log marked PROP_MODE=INTERNET. Nothing reaches the air.
The ShackDeck app for Android pairs with the program by a QR code and runs it from anywhere: the dial, the mode, the band and the source by finger, FT8 decodes with flags, the stations on the map with the colours of the ones you still need, the waterfall with a spectrum, and working stations by FT8 and by voice through the radio at home. At home over the local network, on the road through shackdeck.com. By itself the phone listens to online receivers with its own FT8 decoder.
Listening, fax and the sky above you: all in the same free program.
More than two hundred stations worth hearing in eleven rubrics: mystery stations, time signals, beacons, aviation, military nets, broadcasters, the ISS and QO-100. Each has a story behind the question mark and a receiver that actually hears it.
A chart arrives in ten minutes at two lines a second. ShackDeck finds the phasing, measures the line period so the chart never leans, and ends the picture on the stop tone.
The geostationary amateur transponder at 10.49 GHz, through public receivers that have a dish. The converter arithmetic is done for you: tune 10489.750 and hear the beacon.
The ISS, amateur and weather satellites: where they are right now, the passes for the next day, azimuth, elevation and Doppler-corrected frequencies. A Listen link opens a public receiver under the satellite.
Starlink lives in a group of its own, so it never blankets the map until you ask. Then the whole constellation appears, and the satellites above you are named.
The service channel of the Russian segment of the ISS: the crew reports to mission control near Moscow in plain FM while the station passes over Russia and Europe. ShackDeck picks a receiver under the pass.
A Russian transmitter that has been sending a dull buzz on 4625 kHz for more than forty years, with a voice reading code groups now and then. The most famous unexplained signal on shortwave, and easy to hear from Europe after dark.
The amateur radio downlink of the ISS: several times a year a week of slow-scan pictures, in between the astronauts' answers to schoolchildren's questions. ShackDeck decodes the pictures on screen.
