The headline: your Watchlist now lights up FT8. Around it, thirty-plus fixes from one of the busiest field-report stretches this project has had — ECHOCAT Web reaches near-parity with the desktop, a pile of maddening rig bugs die, and a dozen reporters get their names on the changelog.
🎨 The Watchlist comes to FT8 / FT4 / FT2
Your three Watchlist groups (Settings > Spots — each with its own color, emoji, and callsign list) now decorate the FT8 decode feed exactly like WSJT-X's color lists, and then some:
- A decode matching a group fills the whole row in that group's color — visible from across the room, with the group emoji beside the message.
- Lists accept wildcards (
W1AW/*) and CQ tags: any letters-only entry of up to four characters (NA,EU,POTA,TEST) matches stations calling CQ with that modifier. "Show me anyone calling CQ NA in orange" is now one list entry. - Anyone calling YOU is unmissable — a solid red band, bold, outranking every other highlight.
- A new DXCC entity pops in bright magenta automatically, based on your own log.
- Group edits apply to an open FT8 window live, including rows already on screen, and the FT8 gear menu has an "Edit watchlist colors" shortcut straight to the settings.
Requested by a WSJT-X convert — this one's for everyone making the same jump. Coming to the mobile app next.
📱 ECHOCAT Web grows up
An eleven-item parity list from a dedicated remote operator drove a full pass over the browser client:
- The full logbook — the old ~125-QSO ceiling was a transfer limit, now lifted entirely.
- Tap any FT8 decode to call — including stations finishing a QSO with someone else (tail-ending), not just fresh CQs.
- The waterfall stopped freezing — three separate causes fixed, including one that froze web and desktop together whenever the desktop window was minimized.
- Both VFOs show in split, filter width gets fine 50/100 Hz steps, PSK31 gains squelch and a TX echo, solar SFI/K/A pills join the status bar, a text-size setting, worked-station checkmarks in green, and CW key-as-I-type streaming on desktop and web.
- A real wattmeter for Flex — measured forward power was being read and thrown away; it now drives meters on desktop and web, and the old "TX" bar is honestly relabeled "TX audio".
- LAN web clients now receive the same full state hydration as paired phones — no more blank digital panes after a refresh.
📻 Rig fixes with names attached
- Elecraft K3/K4/KX3: filter width was being sent in the wrong units via the wrong command — a 2700 Hz request literally asked the radio for 27 kHz and stepped roofing-filter slots as a side effect. Now uses BW, the command Elecraft's own experts recommend.
- Icom via wfview/rigctld: selecting a filter width no longer snaps back to 2.4k a second later.
- Icom filter width over CI-V works at all now (it was silently unimplemented), and the ECHOCAT ATU switch genuinely enables/disables the tuner instead of firing blind tune cycles.
- FT-891 (and friends) that tested fine but never connected: two layered bugs — a silently skipped startup connection and rig activation failing to hand over connection details — both fixed; a lone configured rig now activates itself.
- IC-7000 joins the supported-rig list.
- KiwiSDR: the false "receiver is full" error now explains preview-limited receivers honestly, and
password@host:portin the SDR field uses a station password everywhere. - QRZ: passwords containing spaces or % now log in (QRZ's server compares them literally; POTACAT retries in the form it expects).
- Remote Launcher now always starts your newest installed version instead of a leftover old one.
🏹 Hunters and loggers
- "Worked before" grew manners: a configurable rework window, automatic park awareness (an activator at a new park is fair game — matching POTA's own credit rules), and a fix for Hunt blocking on any prior contact ever, on any band.
- Speed activators who skip the final 73: pressing Skip on a reports-exchanged QSO now logs it and moves on — the one-tap log button hunters asked for.
- The spots table holds your place — a refresh can no longer shove the row you're reading, and Scan snaps back to the top when it wraps.
- Sortable CW speed (WPM) column, custom CAT toggle buttons and sliders, and the idle receiver no longer grabs your radio 30 seconds after you stop operating — nor pauses dial-following while you're watching the VFO.
🧰 Under the hood
- A crash now shows a dialog naming the log file with the details, and that log survives the relaunch that reports it.
- A settings-save defect that re-read the entire QSO log repeatedly (and could crash the app on event opt-in) is fixed.
- Building from source now refuses to package without the native decoders instead of shipping a silently crippled app.
Thanks to WZ4LZ, K6RBJ, KQ4MHD, W8ATE, K2TAV, N3FMC, G6INI, N2FSM, KZ4ZX, KI4NHS, N4RDX, N3VD, RaptorFlight, LZ3AW, Stan, and the K3 experts who diagnosed by ear. Sixteen reporters, one release.