Version 0.3.3: the online band behaves like the real one, contacts by the WSJT-X rules

An air that behaves like the air. The online band is no longer the same on every band. The server works out the sun over both stations and behaves like the real bands: 160 m is open only at night and not far, with a floor up to S9 and crackle; 80 m much the same, a little cleaner and a little farther; 40 m works day and night; 20 m by day, weaker at night, and a station closer than four hundred kilometres falls into the skip zone; 17, 15, 12 and 10 m open only by day and only now and then, for a quarter of an hour at a time. On VHF the signal goes by tropo for a few hundred kilometres and beyond that only in meteor pings: brief bursts a few times a minute, every eighth one long, so an MSK144 contact over meteors takes minutes, not seconds. Every path has its own QSB: shallow on some, on others the signal sinks into the noise and comes back. Neighbours a few dozen kilometres away are always heard on the ground wave.

The receiver's mode can now be heard: the program filters the online band's audio with the mode's passband, so CW is narrow and ringing, SSB runs from 200 to 3000 Hz, AM takes the whole width, and in LSB the band is upside down, as it should be when the other station runs USB. The S-meter, the waterfall and the decoders go through the same filter. The program does not show who is on the band: it is the air, a station has to be found.

FT8, FT4 and MSK144 contacts as in WSJT-X. Beside the decode list sits the "FT8 QSO" card in the style of the other cards. The station and its square are filled in by a double-click on its line, nothing is typed; the bearing and distance stand beside them. CQ goes out in the nearest period and the period bar counts down. The Tx1–Tx6 messages open up as the exchange proceeds, as in WSJT-X: 73 cannot go out before the reports are exchanged. With Auto the contact runs by itself; without it the next message is picked by a click without stopping the transmitter. One Transmit/Stop button, and the TRANSMIT lamp stops the key too. At the end of the contact the Log QSO window opens, as in WSJT-X: every field filled, the name and QTH from QRZ.com or HamQTH, OK writes it down. The settings have "Prompt me to log QSO"; unticked, the contact goes straight in. The decode lines carry DT, and after the country and the square the bearing and distance to the station. When you are called, the program sounds.

RTTY, PSK31 and SSTV as full contacts. The RTTY and PSK31 panel is built like the FT8 card. A station calling you becomes the one you work by itself, any other callsign is taken by a click on it in the decoded text. The name, QTH and square come from QRZ.com, and the exchange's RST, name, QTH and locator are picked out of the text. After your 73 macro the Log QSO window opens. Your own name and QTH are set once, in the station settings, and go into the macros. SSTV follows the protocol: the CQ, Answer with the RSV report, Confirmation, 73 and Picture templates are lettered over your own picture of any format or over the colour bars, the preview shows exactly what goes out, and the 73 picture logs the contact. All of it works with your own transceiver as well as on the online band.

Fixed. FT8 contacts did not show in the logbook because of the date format. A station above or below the dial was heard the wrong way. The online SDR stays a receiver: switching to it no longer reports anything about transmitting.