The HamBone

Direct access to collected online services:
Each link opens in a new window.
There are many more sites, but many show the same tools and data, so i have tried to keep the list short.

Usable HF Frequencies https://www.hfpropagation.com/ Global Ionosphere Radio Observatory (GIRO) Ionosonde data and links.

Propagation Data and Tools https://www.hfunderground.com/propagation/ Including Wallops Island Observations.

VOACAP Online for Ham Radio https://www.voacap.com/hf/ High quality interactive world map.

NOAA Radio Dashboard https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/r ... unications

DX View World Map by band.https://hf.dxview.org/ MUF and SNR for each band. Instructions top left of map. Fun, though still needs work?

NorthWest Research Associates https://spawx.nwra.com/spawx/env_latest.html Space weather data updated hourly.

WSPR - map show where signals actually travel https://www.wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map

Real‑Time HF Propagation Prediction https://hamwaves.com/propagation/en/index.html Fine site with many prediction tools by ON4AA. (Site being worked on today 11JAN24)

Eham.net Propagation Tools Index https://www.eham.net/propagation Most comprehensive collection of propagation tools available, Each rated.

Solar Data Banners & Widgets - Paul L Herrman N0NBH https://www.hamqsl.com/solar.html Not really tools, but downloadable code if you are doing a web site.

DXzone propagation software https://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Software/Propagation/ Downloadable software.

What does it all mean? The ARRL website propagation chapter https://www.arrl.org/chapter-8-propagation contains

Here's my personal Azimuth map for FM17. Ok it'll do for much of eastern US.

It's a freebie from Clublog https://clublog.org where a map will be generated centered on any Maidenhead locator square. So what? Why do I need this odd-looking thing? In short, you'll get your direction right for antennas, understand why China is almost due north of Va, USA -not E or W. Madagascar is due E, despite being well south of the equator. Why? We are used to looking at Mercator projection maps where the round earth is stretched and distorted to lie on a flat rectangular sheet. The Azimuth circular map, with you at the center, gets all the directions right for anywhere in the world, and distances right from you. Distances and directions between other pairs of points on the map are not right.

Any other uses? I find it useful for DX when a couple of stations are heard, the map may show that they are in fact from a similar direction, and so it may be worth going after another DX "catch" that one didn't suspect was related to the area with an open band.

Job for a coder or cartographer: Sometimes I shade in the grayline on the Azimuth map, where it makes a bit more sense when choosing a band for particular DX. Guess what shape is the grayline on a correct-bearing map?

There ought to be an Azimuth projection with grayline, but i've never found a ready-made one. Have you?

Looks like an azimuth projection with global daylight on this ad picture of the Microham ARCO controller?
Full details are at https://www.microham.com/contents/en-us/d50_ARCO.html

So, I'm still looking forsomething similar for my computer. I have azimuth maps and daylight mercator maps, but not daylight az. Got to be somewhere....?

Its an oldie. Simple and flawless.
https://aa6z.tripod.com/id2.html
​​KP4SX

This app seems to come from Paul Burton, AA6Z.
We do hope it is for open distribution free.

Yes, thank you. A golden oldie indeed!
Fine clear maps with lots of options.

Clear AZ Great Circle maps with grayline, daylight and lots more!

Runs with my Win11, and also runs with Arch Linux (Wine):
The app likes to be run from its containing folder, so the cd first. Just including the path with the app makes it unhappy.
Win users will cringe at the Linux path here but spaces and braces are escaped by the backslash; forward slash is for a directory.


The screenshot method works well for printing, I too couldn't get it to play nice with an installed Brother laser printer.

I expect that it will run with other flavors of Linux and Win. Maybe post here if it works for you!

The freebie xplanet map that comes with (also free) CQRLOG auto-populates with digital and other CQ calls and looks like this:
The price is right and what's not to like? Not much, as it turns out, though I did make the font a little bigger, and explored some other config options, but settled for pretty much how it comes out of the box.

While xplanet and cqrlog are available with most Linux distros, they are also cross-platform:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xplanet
https://www.cqrlog.com/

Azimuth maps are fun, correct directions for the antenna and correct distances too, from the central origin. They come with surprises: who'd have guessed that from Eastern US, Eastern Asia is due north, "over the top"!