DX Cluster and Spots

DX Cluster and Spots

Servers

Add multiple cluster servers (Settings). They auto-reconnect; one is the master used for sending commands. A quiet node is not treated as a dead one — silence keeps its session, login and filters. The Cluster tab and the Main-view cluster pane share the same live feed.

Filter sidebar

A show/hide filter sidebar (shared by the Cluster tab and the Main pane):

• Callsign search, hide worked, group duplicates.
• Filter by band / mode / status / source, plus NEW POTA and NEW COUNTY chips.

Per-spot status and tuning

Each spot is coloured by status relative to your log:

• new (entity never worked), new-band, new-mode, new-slot, worked.
• Settings → General → Group digital modes as one (DXCC-style) makes FT8/FT4/RTTY/PSK count as a single Digital mode for the colouring and the matrix badges, matching how DXCC counts.

Click a spot to tune the rig (fills the callsign into the entry strip). A multi-band Band Map shows panadapter-style strips per band — its CW / data / phone sub-bands use their own colour-blind-checked hues, and Ctrl+↑ / Ctrl+↓ jumps to the next spot above/below the current frequency and tunes it.

POTA spots are tagged with their park reference (via api.pota.app).

The entry strip's band matrix can also show the ClubLog Most Wanted rank (Settings → General): an MW #rank pill next to the entity name, personalised to your callsign, refreshed daily.

Sending a spot

Use the Send Spot window to announce a DX spot on the master cluster: callsign + frequency + a message. The frequency defaults to the live CAT frequency (full resolution, including sub-kHz).

Spot alerts

Tools → Alert management — Log4OM-style alert rules on call / country / band / mode / spotter, with sound, visual and e-mail notification. Active alerts appear as a discreet bell in the entry strip; click it for the list.

Watch list

The callsigns you are hunting, with the spots for each one underneath and what each spot is worth to you.

• A bare entry matches exactly that call.
• End it with * for a family: VK9* catches every VK9…, RI0SP* the expedition's portable forms.
• Auto-add as contest: any spotted callsign containing a text you give joins the watch list by itself, as a contest entry. Empty switches it off, and entries already collected stay.
• A contest station is judged against the current UTC day — at 00:00 UTC every slot can be worked again.

Band openings

On 10, 12, 6, 4 and 2 m, OpsLog can watch for an opening. Switching it on adds the two RBN nodes and subscribes to the PSK Reporter feed: the detection needs far more ears than a cluster alone can give it.

Near distance is the setting that matters. A report only proves your path if it was collected near you, so:

• Smaller is more local, but leaves fewer receivers listening — too small and the watch has nothing to look at.
• 300 km borrows the ears of a whole region, and suits HF.
• 100 km suits 2 m, where a duct is narrow.
• Where stations are far apart — VK, ZL, much of North America — 1000 to 2000 km may be what it takes to find any receivers at all.

A detected opening stays on screen as a blinking badge in the status bar, rather than passing in a toast, and goes out by itself when the spots stop arriving.

Marking a station where you heard it

If you leave a callsign in the entry field and then move the VFO by more than 400 Hz, OpsLog marks that station where you heard it — on the band map and on the panadapter, in its own colour — and clears the field. It is never sent to a cluster: it is a note to yourself about a station you tuned past.

POTA references on spots

Spots are tagged with the park reference from pota.app, in a green POTA column, with a NEW POTA badge for a park you have not worked. Switch it off and the badge, the filter and the column all go — a spot that is both a new band and a new park then reads NEW BAND alone.

External spot sources

A DXHunter remote-call UDP packet fills the callsign, and when it carries <FREQ> and <MODE> it also tunes whichever CAT backend is active. See Settings and Data for the UDP configuration.

See also: Maps and Antennas for turning the beam to a spot.

When the list looks empty

If spots are arriving and none are shown, the panel says so, names the filters responsible and offers a button to clear them all. The two easiest to forget are the band and mode locks (🔒), because they follow the radio rather than a click — with the rig on 20 m SSB and both locked, a hundred spots on other bands show nothing.

Filter selections are remembered between sessions; a fresh installation starts with none set.

Spotting

When you send a spot, the comment carries the mode and then the award references you have assigned to that contact — the ones on the QSO, not the ones OpsLog would compute for it.