Settings That Save Themselves NEW

Since v5.4.0 there is no Save All button. A tick or a choice is saved the moment you make it, and a field you type in is saved when you finish it — each one confirmed by Details saved. A new install now starts with every satellite switched off, and Reset returns to that, so a first look at the pass list no longer spends your N2YO requests on satellites you never chose; if you were already using the app, your satellites stay exactly as they were.

QO-100 Geostationary Tracking NEW

QO-100 (Es'hail-2) is tracked in a new Geostationary category. It never rises or sets, so instead of a pass list you get its fixed pointing from your grid — azimuth, elevation and distance — computed on your own device from its orbit, with no N2YO key and no API hits. The map and the AR page place it too, its coverage drawn as an outline. Working it through a transverter or an LNB? Enter the uplink and downlink LOs once and rig control tunes your radio to the IF, adding the LO back when you turn the dial. New in v5.2.0.

Desktop Tracking Screen NEW

On macOS, Windows and Linux every pass card now has a Track button where phones have AR. It opens a live tracking screen — azimuth, elevation and range, the AOS/LOS countdown, and the Doppler-corrected uplink and downlink — and drives your radio and rotator exactly as the phone's AR page does, over the network connections. Until v5.2.0 the desktop versions showed no Doppler at all.

Sat Match

Find the passes you can actually work with another station. Enter two grids — Grid 1 is your home grid (prefilled, but editable so you can plan from anywhere) and Grid 2 is the destination — pick a satellite, and Sat Match lists the windows where the bird is above the horizon at both grids at once: the mutual-visibility window for a two-way contact. Each match shows the window, how long it lasts, and the max elevation reached at each grid, with the same follow / calendar / AR / share tools as the prediction cards. New in v4.7.0.

Hams.at Activations NEW

See upcoming amateur-satellite rover activations right inside the app — reading needs no login and no API key. The Hams.at page reads the public feed and lists who's activating, where, and when, with callsign, satellite, mode, frequency and AOS/LOS — ready to pair with Sat Match. It refreshes itself every minute. Share one activation or the whole list as an image.

Now you can announce your own. Tap the “+” in the Hams.at bar, pick a satellite and one of your own upcoming passes, and Ham Satting posts the activation to Hams.at so other operators know to listen for you. You pick a pass rather than typing a time, so the satellite, your position and the time of maximum elevation always agree. Announcing uses your own free Hams.at API key, copied from your Hams.at settings.

Rig Control (CAT) Doppler Tuning NEW Experimental

During a pass Ham Satting can steer your radio's frequency to cancel Doppler shift automatically — one-way tuning that keeps the downlink centred as the bird moves, so you stay on the transponder without chasing the dial. It drives the rig over whatever transport you have: the network (Hamlib rigctld / wfview on port 4532–4533, Icom WLAN direct RS-BA1 for the IC-705 / 9700 / 7610 / 905, Kenwood KNS on the TS-890S / 990S at port 60000, Elecraft K4 over Ethernet on port 9200, or a serial-over-TCP bridge such as ser2net or a USR-W610 / Elfin EW10–EW12 WiFi-serial dongle), Android USB-OTG serial (CI-V, Kenwood, Elecraft and Yaesu cables), or Bluetooth (the IC-705's native BLE, a generic HM-19 / Bluefruit BLE-UART module, or Android Bluetooth SPP). A searchable radio picker (around 110 models across Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood, Elecraft, Xiegu, QRP Labs and Expert Electronics SunSDR (over TCI/WebSocket)) labels every model VERIFIED on real hardware or IMPLEMENTED PER SPEC, and tells you which rigs have no CAT to drive, like the FTM-family handhelds. v5.2.0 adds four more routes: FLRig (XML-RPC, port 12345 — any radio FLRig drives), the FlexRadio SmartSDR API (port 4992 — it tunes the slices you already have open and never creates or keys one), Ten-Tec (Orion, Orion II, Eagle, Argonaut V / VI, Omni VII, Jupiter) and Alinco (DX-SR8, DX-SR9, DX-77 — HF, a 10 m downlink receiver for AO-7 mode A). On computers the rig section now offers the network connections too.

Experimental. CAT control depends on your particular radio, cable, dongle and operating-system permissions. Models are labelled VERIFIED on real hardware or IMPLEMENTED PER SPEC precisely because we cannot test every combination — if yours does not drive, that is the feature still finding its feet, not a mistake in your settings.

Rotator Control NEW Experimental

During a pass Ham Satting can point an az/el antenna rotator at the satellite and keep it tracking hands-free as the bird moves, then park it at a position you choose on LOS so it never sits aimed at the sky. It drives the rotator over the network to a Hamlib rotctld, or straight to a controller that speaks its own protocol over TCP — or a serial-over-TCP bridge — including GS-232 (A/B), Easycomm (I / II / III), SPID (Rot1 / Rot2Prog / MD-01/02/03), DCU-1 / Rotor-EZ / Green Heron RT-21, Prosistel, and M2 RC2800. Azimuth-only rotators are supported (the elevation command is simply ignored). You declare your rotator's travel limits and where azimuth zero sits (north or south) — only you can see the mast — and the app reads the position back and watches it converge so it never drives blind. Off by default; with nothing connected the on-screen compass and elevation still guide you to point by hand. It runs from the AR tracking page on phones and, since v5.2.0, from the Track screen on computers.

Experimental. Rotator control depends on your controller, its firmware and how it is wired to the phone. Treat it as something to try rather than something to rely on for an unattended pass.

Weather Satellites NEW

Track Meteor-M N2-3 and N2-4 on 137.900 MHz LRPT. “Purple mode” applies universal VHF Doppler and records session audio for post-processing with external SDR software.

Music Broadcast NEW

Listen to short music tones broadcast by satellites that use a melody instead of CW Morse as their unique RF identifier — classical compositions, video-game themes, even Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. Brown-tinted RX-only mode on UHF 400–402 MHz, ideal for SDR listeners. Includes BALKAN-1, Flamingo-1, OTP-2, and T.MicroSat-1.

APRS Live Layer NEW

APRS-IS layer for your own beacons + nearby APRS rigs — and, since v5.2.0, APRS messages: messages to your callsign (any SSID) arrive with an unread badge, and with your APRS-IS passcode you can send and acknowledge them (67 characters, retried until acknowledged; the server, not the app, validates your passcode). v5.3.0 makes sending work: the message screen no longer disconnects APRS as it opens, it shows when your passcode is still being checked, a refusal names the callsign it was checked against, and Settings says where to get a passcode. Age-fading track polylines behind moving stations, 40+ APRS-symbol → Material-icon mapping, SSID filter chips (-9 / -13 / -11 / Other) docked above the bottom nav, bulletins feed, smart YOU-hide when a tracked station overlaps your position, tap-to-select details panel with bearing & distance, heard-by iGate attribution via aprs.fi. Dedicated APRS callsign keeps SSIDs out of your QSO log. v4.5.0+45 hardened the lifecycle — toggle OFF then ON reloads stations immediately and tab-switching mid-connection no longer leaves zombie timers.

Scheduled Service Events NEW

Schedule frequency-override windows for satellites that occasionally drift from their primary frequency — covers SSTV, SSDV, Digital (APRS / digipeater), and Weather (Meteor-M N2-3 / N2-4 137.900 ↔ 137.100 MHz rotation). Pick service type + satellite + date range + frequency; AR page auto-switches when an event is active and falls back to the default outside it. Music broadcasts are excluded — their frequency is the unique identifier.

AMSAT Live Activity Indicator NEW

Every prediction card and notification card carries a small dot showing real-world activity from the AMSAT Live OSCAR Satellite Status page over the last 24 hours UTC. The dot uses the AMSAT cell palette directly so it mirrors what you see on amsat.org: blue = Active (heard), purple = ISS Crew Voice, amber = Telemetry/Beacon only, orange = Conflicting reports (small “?” overlay), magenta = No-signal reported, grey = no reports. Hollow ring means AMSAT does not track the bird. Tap the dot for a themed popup: 48-hour strip, dates header on top, services stacked on the left, individual reports per cell (callsign + grid + 15-min UTC slot, with × dismiss), and a compact share-image button. AMSAT-tracked modes with no recent reports are listed as a footer (“No reports in last 6 days: SSDV, VHF Digi”), so the absence of a row is never silent. Same compact share is also available on the (i) Pass Info popup — what you see in the popup, including the cell-detail panel if open, is what you share. 15-minute refresh while a prediction page is open; silent background retry on errors. Read-only consumption with full attribution — we do not submit reports.