DXCC Beaming positioning

This is a utility to assist ham radio operators in quickly assessing where they are located relative to the main lobe of a remote station, judging from their current QSOs.

When to use it

Let's say you are listening to QSO between two stations and one of those is a DX station you are interested in. It would be very helpful to quickly check what is your position realtive to where the DX station is pointing their antennas, thus maximising your chances to contact them. If you have already listened to the details of their setup (like antenna, power) during the QSO you can quickly decide whether it makes sense to call them now or wait until they turn their antennas to your direction.

How it works

You run the program with your own DXCC prefix (which is resolved (roughly) to your country coordinates) and let it running. When you hear the 2 stations you type in their prefixes and you get a calculation of how closer/farther you are relative to the other station and how many degrees to their right/left.

For example, if you are located in England and you are listening a station from Canada having a QSO with a station from Italy you just have to enter their prefixes in the order "DX OTHER" , where DX is the station of interest (in this case the Canadian station) and OTHER is the station of reference (in this case the Italian station). in this case we enter "VE I" and we get this result:

Canada -> Italy
via SP I am -4.72 degrees, 1456.94 Km closer
via LP I am -4.72 degrees, 1456.94 Km farther
SP:
Canada -->  55.82°/ 6940.97 Km --> Italy
Canada -->  51.10°/ 5484.04 Km --> Me
LP:
Canada --> 235.82°/33091.03 Km --> Italy
Canada --> 231.10°/34547.96 Km --> Me

which shows that the DX station (the Canadian station) "sees us" 4.72 degrees to their left and 1456.94 Km closer than the other station. Practically we are in the same direction but much closer.

The raw bearings and distances from the DX station are also provided for both short and long path circuits.

As another example, while still located in England, a station from Sweden is having a QSO with a station from Greece and we are interested in the station from Sweden. We enter "sm sv" and we get

Sweden -> Greece
via SP I am +68.01 degrees, 1088.88 Km closer
via LP I am +68.01 degrees, 1088.88 Km farther
SP:
Sweden --> 165.00°/ 2432.35 Km --> Greece
Sweden --> 233.00°/ 1343.47 Km --> Me
LP:
Sweden --> 345.00°/37599.65 Km --> Greece
Sweden -->  53.00°/38688.53 Km --> Me

This shows that although we are 1088.88 Km closer than the Greek station we are 68.01 degrees to their right, which is quite off the main direction. If the station is using a highly directive antenna, we probably are off the main lobe and into their null.

How to run it

Download the pre-built jar from the releases, make sure you have Java 21 or later installed and run it on a terminal like this:

java -jar dxccbeampos-1.1.jar MY_PREFIX

replacing MY_PREFIX with your callsign prefix e.g running it for an English prefix, that would be

java -jar dxccbeampos-1.1.jar G

or

java -jar dxccbeampos-1.1.jar 2E