WSPR Activity Map

During the last month I have been playing around with the Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR) on 30m seeing who could hear my 5 watts around the world, I was impressed to see its actually quite a lot of people even running low power on the Yaesu FT-950.

WSPR is dubbed as being a “protocol designed for probing potential propagation paths with low-power transmissions.  Normal transmissions carry a station’s callsign, Maidenhead grid locator, and transmitter power in dBm” and it stands up to it, last night I setup the radio around 5pm and left it on till 9:40pm transmitting on 40m.

Over that period of time WSPRnet was reporting the following

Hearing: CU4AEA, DC6MY, DF6MK, DF8TI, DG4BCL, DG7RJ, DH5RAE, DH8SA, DJ1GT, DJ6OL, DJ9NZ, DK1ER, DK3SML, DK8BZ, DL1SIG, DL2SCH, DL2ZQ, DL4FJ, DL5ALW, DL5RBD, DL6YCU, DL8FCL, DM2AUD, EW1CD, G3SUY, G3YSX, G4PEC, I5IAR, IQ3AZ, K1JT, LA6IKA, LA6TPA, M5LMY, MW0VVO, N2BJW, NU8D, OH2GAX, PA3MET, PD4JSE, RV6HW, RW9SZ, VK6BN, W3GXT, W3PM, W8DA, WA2RSX, WB4KLJ, ZC4VJ

Heard by: CU4AEA, DC6MY, DF4PM, DF6MK, DF9CY, DG0OPK, DG4BCL, DG7RJ, DH5RAE, DH8SA, DJ8LG, DJ9NZ, DK1ER, DK3SML, DL1SIG, DL5ALW, DL5RBD, DL6SCD, DL8FCL, EI7JQ, G3YSX, G4AXL, G8CZI, I2PHD, I5IAR, IQ3AZ, IZ3LCH, K1JT, LA6IKA, LA6TPA, LA9JO, M5LMY, N2AET, N2BJW, NU8D, OH2GAX, OH2MZA, ON3VHF, PA3FNY, SM7ETW, UT1PX, VA2RJ, VK6BN, W3GXT, W3PM, W8LIW, WA2RSX, WB4KLJ, ZC4VJ

This to me is an impressive amount of data, and shows when it might be possible to work such stations (maybe) I was pleased to see VK6BN on the list too.  The data collected is available for download via WSPRnet as CSV files daily, what I’d really like to see is this data available instantly via an API this would make the data much more useful to develop propagation tools.

I think next I will set it up on 80m to see what can actually be heard, as the 80m Windom really doesn’t seem to perform that well on the band!

I find this system useful in the way that I can put out a CQ call out on say 20m, and then a few minutes later look at the reporter system to see where I’m heard. Sometimes it’s surprising that someone in the states can hear your signal but you cannot hear anyone!

At the moment the only software which supports it is Digital Master 780, but there is a software development kit on the website http://www.pskreporter.info and I hope to see others implement the system and even better an API to allow others to use the data!