What's new on afu.tools

If you had created a site page under your own callsign, you now find it as your own page at afu.tools/callsign. Everything came along: title, text, contact, links, photos and the location, which now sits in the box “My station”, with a map if you show the exact position. You set up the box under My page. The old address redirects, and your account shows a note about it once.

Your page at afu.tools/callsign is now edited in blocks under My page: paragraph, heading, list, quote, picture, gallery, YouTube video, PDF to download and button, all via “+” or “/” on an empty line. For each picture you choose whether it sits left, right, above or below the section text or exactly in place, left and right also small, normal or large. The media library takes photos by drag and drop, scales them down to at most 1920 px and removes the location data. The editor saves a draft every 30 seconds, you can bring back the last ten versions under “Versions”, and the preview also shows what is not saved yet. Existing pages look exactly as before. The same goes for club and site pages.

From now on you create keys for the API with your afu.tools account: on the API page or in your account under “API keys”. The key shows up right away, no detour via email. In your account you see all your keys with requests and last use and can revoke them. Keys from before stay valid; if you have an account with the same email address, they show up there by themselves.

With a personal callsign you now get your own page instead of a site: create it in your account under “My pages”, write some text, upload photos (50 MB) and embed images from other addresses, such as a weather map. afu.tools fetches those images itself, so your visitors never contact the other server. Every change and every new image is first looked at by our own checking model. From now on, sites are only unattended stations such as repeaters and Hamnet nodes; if you already had a site under your own callsign, you'll now find its text on your new page. Club, special event and contest callsigns (DL0…, DK0…, DA0HQ, DQ50…) get the same kind of page, looked after by several accounts together: request one under “My pages”. If the BNetzA callsign list names you as the person responsible, it's yours straight away; otherwise the owner of the page or the operator decides. Your page lives directly at afu.tools/<callsign> (e.g. afu.tools/dl1abc), and so do sites (afu.tools/db0abc); old links with /funker/ and /standort/ still lead there.

Polls can now find dates: you suggest dates, everyone says yes, maybe or no for each one, and the grid shows when it suits best. You can limit the places per date. Once the date is fixed, anyone who asked gets an email, and you can subscribe to the date as a calendar, so changes arrive by themselves. On top of that, every poll is now public or private: private ones aren't in any list or search engine, only the link leads there.

On Polls you can now ask the questions yourself: a date for field day, an antenna choice, a logo for the clubhouse. With an account you create a poll with questions, answers and pictures to choose from. You decide whether only signed-in users or guests too may vote, whether votes stay anonymous or show names, when the result is visible and when voting ends. The short link is easy to share, and there is a QR code and a CSV export.

Radio policy now tells you what affects you: under "What affects you?" you enter your class, your bands and what you do (that stays in your browser), and the list then highlights and filters the proceedings. Each one says what it actually means, for instance how many repeaters in DL sit in the affected range and how many are near you. The Get involved tab lists consultations and hearings that are still open, with the deadline for your calendar and a guide to writing a response. The Topics tab shows where a topic currently stands, from the World Radiocommunication Conference to implementation in Germany. On top of that: bands under pressure with a trend, abbreviations explained in the new glossary section Regulation, and a link to every proceeding for sharing.

New under Knowledge: Radio policy. Here you can see what the Bundestag, Bundesrat, Bavarian state parliament, Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA, German regulator), EU, CEPT and ITU are currently discussing and which of it hits amateur radio: an overview split into directly affected, indirectly affected and opportunity, and for each proceeding its progress as a step bar with the next date, deadlines for having your say and how the parliamentary groups voted. Rating and summaries are done automatically, and you can report mistakes right on the proceeding. New items also come as an RSS feed, deadlines as a calendar.

The contest logger for Windows and Linux is now available to everyone (version 0.2.12). It runs in its own program window so that F1 to F12 belong to it, needs no network, and works out points, multipliers and dupes with the same rules as the scoring here. Built in are the Frankencontest, WAG, WAEDC with QTC, CQ WW and CQ WPX, plus the contests of the contest module. On top of that: radio via USB or rigctld, CW also via WinKeyer, voice keyer, decoders for CW, RTTY, FT8 and FT4, two radios, band map with cluster, multi-op via afu.tools or on the LAN, pile-up practice and log submission straight from the logger. It tells you about new versions itself and updates at the press of a button. The logger in the browser is still there at /contest-logger.

The cheat sheet now also comes as an A5 card: at the top it says "Paper A4 | A5". For class A and E the card is double-sided (front: HF and keep clear, back: the higher bands and microwaves; when printing, flip on the long edge), class N fits on one side. The segments are now a small table with a colour mark for each type, with commas and dashes lined up. Legend and sources sit at the bottom of the page, and on the right of the title a QR code takes you back to the sheet for your class.

Japan has its own transmit ranges on 160 m, so if you want to work JA, you listen there and call split. The cheat sheet now has a "Listen for JA" row on 160 m: 1.800 to 1.810 MHz (receive only for us, that's below our band), 1.810 to 1.825 CW, 1.825 to 1.875 and the JA window 1.9075 to 1.9125 MHz. The 160 m page shows for each class whether you may transmit there yourself and with what power (in the JA window it's 10 W for us). If you check a frequency in a JA range on /bandplan, you get the note straight away.

Sites with a weather station get a "Weather" tab: current readings with dew point and pressure trend, graphs for 24 hours, 7 and 30 days and a whole year, plus daily values as a table. The data comes in via APRS, and weewx sends it by itself with the [[CWOP]] section. If you manage a site, you assign the station under Account › Site; suggestions from the APRS map and HamnetDB are already there, and so is a guide for weewx. For assigned stations afu.tools keeps the history longer than for the rest of the APRS map.

The Smith chart now has its own tab to play with: you get a random load at some frequency and bring it into the green circle in the middle with inductor, capacitor and line. Dragging a part onto the bar puts it in series, below it in parallel; dragging sideways changes the value, a click removes it. Four levels from Easy (one part is enough) to Expert (E12 values only, inductors with a Q of 100), plus hint, solution, frequency curve and |S11| across frequency. Match with as few parts as possible and you get three stars. Every round has a code in the link, so your whole local club can play the same puzzle.

The Smith chart has four new explainer sections. Under "What is Γ?" a pulse runs from a light rope onto a heavy one, and you see without any formula how much comes back and when it's upside down. Under "Cables and Smith" you slide a probe along the cable: at the top the standing wave with V max and V min, next to it the point moves round its SWR circle. "Across frequency" shows six filters with their loops at the ripple circle and the curve as a rotatable cylinder over frequency, plus the sphere for |Γ| > 1. In the simulator, a dashed arc on hover shows where the point moves when a part gets bigger. New example: two ways to the centre, switchable with V. In the "From rectangle to Smith" tab you can now see both planes side by side as well.

All bands for your class on one A4 page: the cheat sheet shows for each band the limits and power under the AFuV (German amateur radio regulations), the segments as bars (with abbreviations so it stays readable in black and white), FT8 and FT4, how close to the edge you may go on SSB, and emergency comms in red. At the bottom are the microwave bands as a table and the keep clear box. Pick your class at the top (A, E or N), then print. On /bandplan the link next to the class field takes you there.

Every band page, such as 80 m or 2 m, now tells you right at the top where you can transmit with your class: pick class and mode (CW, SSB, FT8 and digital, FM), and you get the range, power and the usual frequencies, on SSB with the dial limit, on FM with repeaters and simplex separated. If your class may not transmit on the band, you see which bands it can use. Next to it is the keep clear box with emergency comms, beacons, satellites and guard bands. Your choice stays when you switch to another band and is part of the link.

The band plan is now split up in detail, copied from the IARU Region 1 band plan and the DARC band plans. On 2 m beacons, all mode, repeater inputs and outputs, FM/DV simplex, guard bands and satellites are listed separately, on 40 m the automatic stations and the SSB range with DX priority, 60 m has segments at all for the first time, and 6 m and 23 cm are split up in detail. After the Vienna conference, FM on 10 m may be up to 10 kHz wide. New are the German emergency frequencies 3.643 MHz and 144.260 MHz USB, in red in the bar and on the emergency comms page. The band scale of the remote control shows the same ranges, and in beacon, satellite and guard ranges it no longer changes the mode.

In the band plan the field at the top now checks a frequency completely: band, segment, suitable modes and whether your class may transmit there. Type it in Hz, kHz or MHz, the unit is recognised. Pick SSB and the check tells you whether the sideband sticks out of the phone range or the band, because it extends up to 2.7 kHz from the displayed carrier. The lowest LSB or highest USB dial frequency is a dashed line in the bar of every HF band and on the band pages. On FM it gives deviation, bandwidth and channel spacing, and near emergency and beacon frequencies it warns you. With /bandplan#f=7.074 you share a check as a link.

The 13 calculators are now in five groups (site, antenna and cable, power and level, workshop, power supply) with an overview at the front. Each card shows its result large with a small graphic next to it: dipole with dimensions, SWR scale, S-meter, coil, resistor with real colour bands and more. What you enter goes into the address, and "Copy link" takes it along. In the breadcrumbs at the top, the page name opens a list of all calculators and simulators, so you switch with one click, also from the Smith chart. Fixed along the way: the EIA-96 SMD marking (01C is 10 kΩ, the page showed 100 Ω) and the size of a locator square (six characters are roughly 4.6 by 5.8 km here).

New at /modulation: AM, SSB, FM, CW and FSK in the time domain and the spectrum, with occupied bandwidth and the width at −40 or −60 dB. Hard-keyed CW at 25 WPM spreads about 6.6 kHz at −60 dB, with a 5 ms raised-cosine edge it's about 440 Hz, until an overdriven PA brings the clicks back. Two tones show how IP3 and noise set the dynamic range of a receiver and why a preamp on HF does more harm than good. In the Superhet tab you set the IF, oscillator and preselection and see the image frequency, half IF and oscillator harmonics with their attenuation. You'll find it under Simulators.

New at /empfangskette: build your receive setup from antenna, preamp, LNB, cable, filter and receiver and drag the blocks into a different order. The page works out noise temperature and noise figure using Friis, shows each block's share of the noise, G/T, band noise per ITU-R P.372 and the S/N for a signal, also over a free-space path or via the moon. Presets for QO-100, 2 m EME and HF, where the preamp does nothing at all. You can drop in a filter from /filter as a block with its insertion loss. You'll find it under Simulators.

New at /leitung: send a step, a pulse or a carrier into a cable made of up to eight sections and watch the wave travel and partly come back at every discontinuity. Below it is the trace a TDR shows at the start of the cable, with position and impedance of every point. With a carrier you see the standing wave with the peaks and nulls of voltage and current. Cable and load go into the Smith chart at the press of a button and come back from there with a link. You'll find it under Simulators.

New at /ausbreitung: turn the take-off angle and the frequency and see whether the ray turns back in the ionosphere or goes straight through. From that the page works out skip distance, dead zone, the MUF for your distance and how much the D layer soaks up during the day. "Current values" takes foF2 and the height of the F2 layer from the nearest ionosonde in Propagation. Plus the elevation pattern of your antenna over ground: does its maximum sit at angles that come back? You'll find it under Simulators.

New at /filter: design low-pass, high-pass and band-pass filters, Butterworth or Chebyshev, order 2 to 9. Drag the cut-off frequency in the curve and see how much the harmonics of your band are attenuated. You also get the parts as standard values, turns on iron powder toroids and what each part has to withstand at your power: peak voltage on the capacitor, current and heating of the inductor. A button shows the filter's input on the Smith chart. Both are now under Simulators.

On /ft8 your own transmission could turn up again as received a minute later if the audio dropped out for a while (tab in the background, sound card hung). The page even answered it and then transmitted to your own callsign. Now it only decodes audio that actually arrived during the period itself, and it writes gaps to the log. Lines with your own callsign as sender are greyed out in the list, and the page never answers them, not with Auto Seq and not in auto mode either.

If /ft8 or /js8 are open in two tabs, only the one where you last pressed Enable Tx or CQ transmits.

The Smith simulator can now do more: resistors in series and parallel, inductors and capacitors with Q, cables with loss (per 100 m at a reference frequency, rising with the square root of frequency). You change the type of each part right in the table, you type values with a prefix (22p, 4.7 µH), lines also in degrees or mm.

In the chart you select the load or a part and drag it, target circles r = 1 and g = 1 show where it needs to go, plus zoom up to 8× and a line with the values under the pointer. The sweep has its own range, frequency markers in the chart and a second curve with the loss from transmitter to load. Under Settings you save your starting values, and you save and open circuits as a network file (.snf). 14 new examples, from the 2 m dipole to the lossy cable.

New at /smith: a Smith chart you can drag around. Set the load, see SWR, return loss and reflection, add inductors, capacitors, lines and stubs and see where each part pushes the point. The page works out an L network at the press of a button, with part values at your frequency.

Plus a frequency sweep across the band, eleven ready-made examples from the 25 Ω resistor to the quarter-wave transformer, explainer points in the chart and a large view for your talk at the local club. A measurement file (.s1p) from your analyser is shown as a curve, and the state can be passed on as a link.

The QO-100 gateway on your SDR board can now connect to afu.tools. Under My QO-100 stations you create a station and give its key to the gateway, after which the control page shows spectrum, waterfall and audio from anywhere, with no port forwarding on the router and no VPN. You can let other callsigns listen in. Transmitting through it isn't possible yet.

The guide is now complete up to the point of listening: downloading and checking the gateway, autostart, pairing, LNB and beacon, plus control of the PA with flashing in the browser. Program, checksums and firmware are under /downloads/.

/qo100 is now a proper page about the satellite: where it is, a pointing calculator for azimuth, elevation and polarisation (your location stays in the browser), building a station step by step, and the band plan of the narrowband transponder as a bar. The converter and the beacon offset are still there, and so is your saved offset.

A mistake is gone along the way: the transponder runs from 10,489.500 to 10,490.000 MHz (uplink 2,400.000 to 2,400.500), the CW beacon is at .500 and the BPSK beacon at .750. The old page worked with a range that was too narrow.

Also new are questions and answers, the outline of the guide and the control page for your own QO-100 station. The demo with made-up signals shows what it looks like.

The TRX-Dial is an M5Stack Dial with its own firmware by DK5DEN: a round rotary knob with a touch screen that operates the remote control via Bluetooth. At /dial you flash the firmware straight from Chrome or Edge, with a USB-C cable and without installing anything. The page always shows the latest version of the firmware project.

Under Settings › Rig › Transmit you can now set which sockets on your rig have an antenna connected and, per band, whether it may transmit there direct, only with tuner or not at all. An empty socket can no longer be selected, and if the rig is switched to one anyway (on the rig itself), the station won't transmit. With "with tuner", PTT only works once the tuner is on and has tuned since the last band or antenna change. Thanks to DJ4QV for the idea.

Alongside this there's the antenna catalogue: commercial antennas with their bands, with and without a tuner. Anyone with an account can suggest one, and an entry shows up once it's been approved. In remote control you take an entry for a socket and check it before saving. Needs afu-remote 0.2.126.

Under Settings › Watches there's a new type: Sign-in at the station. As owner or admin you get a notification as soon as someone signs in, either everyone except you or only certain callsigns, and by which route (afu.tools, bridge, guest, direct access/HAMNET, and optionally programs on the station computer). If the station blocks an address after wrong passwords, or an account without permission tries to get in, you hear about that too. For direct access the station needs afu-remote 0.2.124 and pairing with afu.tools.

There's also a new tab, Account › Notifications: besides browser push, you can set up the ntfy phone app there (Android and iPhone, no account needed). The app fetches your notifications straight from afu.tools, even when no browser is open. Thanks to DJ4QV for the idea.

Want to chat with us or other afu.tools users, show off what you're building with remote control, or talk about contest scoring? There's now a Telegram group for that: afu.tools/telegram. It has topics for general chat, remote control, contest scoring and ideas.

The group is for swapping notes, not a replacement for support. Keep reporting bugs and wishes via Report at the top of the page: every report gets a number there, and nothing gets lost in the chat. If your rig is playing up with remote control, request support on the control page under Settings › About and diagnostics › Support. All the ways to reach us are listed under Contact.

Just in time for the WAG there's a contest logger. One entry line: callsign, space, exchange, Enter. As you type you can see whether the station is already in the log on this band and mode (dupe), whether it's a new multiplier and how many points it's worth, plus the score, rate and a partial-callsign check. It knows the WAG rules: DOK or serial number in the exchange, points DL 1, Europe 3, DX 5, multipliers per band counted separately for CW and SSB, and it warns you in the JOTA segments. In remote control it sits in the Logbook panel once a contest is selected, with F1 to F8 for CW messages (Enter sends, ESM style) and a band map from the DX spots. Without a station it runs at /contest-logger, even offline: the QSOs stay in the browser and go to your account as soon as you're back online. The Cabrillo file is generated in the browser. Correcting a logged QSO works at the station from afu-remote 0.2.107.

The afu-remote rig search no longer opens the Standard Port on Yaesu rigs with two USB ports. PTT and keying run over it, and under Linux an FTDX3000 briefly went into transmit during the search. On the Enhanced Port afu-remote now sets RTS: if CAT RTS ENABLE is set in the menu (the factory default on the FTDX3000, FT-891, FT-991, FT-DX10 and FT-710), the rig used to stay silent. New is afu-remote cat-pruefen, which only reads and writes everything to a file. If you run logging or digimode programs alongside afu-remote: use the bridge on the same computer for them, not a second rigctld on the port (here's how). Comes with version 0.2.107.

Rigstudio has a Satellites tab: orbital data and FM transponders go straight into the radio over the programming cable, no manufacturer software needed. There's a preselection of the FM satellites the radio can work, your own selection, and later you just refresh the orbital data. This works with the AnyTone AT-D168UV (with wake-up tone and APRS uplink), the AT-D878UV II with firmware 3.x, and the Icom IC-9700 and IC-9100 (satellite memories). New in Rigstudio are the AT-D168UV, AT-D878UV II S and AT-D890UV; for now Rigstudio only reads the last two. Everything has only been tested against the simulator: if you own one of these radios, you can help with "Read memory for support" in the Backup tab and "Request support" on the radios page.

The site pages now have an APRS tab: everything that appeared on APRS-IS in the last 48 hours under the site's callsign with any SSID (digipeater, iGate, weather station ...), plus the objects those stations send out. With symbol, meaning, type, last packet, locator, device and comment; one click opens the station on the APRS map.

Hover over a symbol on the APRS map and you'll see what it means (car, weather station, iGate, receive only ...), along with callsign, type and when the station was last heard. The dots in the overview show their type too. The meaning is also shown at the top of the station sheet. And the symbol size setting now applies to the dots in the overview as well.

FT8 now has "Auto" in the button row. Auto CQ calls CQ and picks the best of the replies, Auto Call calls stations calling CQ that give you something new. "Auto" decides after each period whether to call a station, answer a caller or call CQ. The ranking runs from top to bottom: continent, CQ zone, ITU zone, DXCC entity, locator, callsign, counted against your log (signed in, also your logbook and Wavelog), per band if you like. Rare entities you still need (the German DX Foundation's Most Wanted) come before everything else. CQ DX and CQ with a continent are respected, foxes are never called, and each station only a few times, then it takes a break. Logging happens without the log window. You stay at the rig: the watchdog always runs, and Halt Tx ends auto mode. Settings are in the dialog under Auto mode. Also works in the FT8 panel of remote control.

The symbols on the APRS map are now a good third bigger by default. Under View › Display you choose the symbol size yourself: Small (as before), Medium, Large or Very large. Callsigns and the ring around the selected station grow with them, and the map remembers your choice in the browser.

DXpeditions like H49A right now often work FT8 in Fox/Hound mode: the Fox transmits below 1000 Hz, often to several stations at once ("K1ABC RR73; W9XYZ <H49A> -12"). FT8 now has a "Hound" switch for this, and the procedure is the usual one: the Fox's callsign goes in the "Fox" field, "Enable Tx", and the page calls in the second period between 1000 and 4000 Hz, nothing lower. When your report arrives, it replies with "R-xx" on the Fox's frequency and repeats that until the RR73 comes; then Halt Tx and a log entry. The combined messages appear in the list with both callsigns and the Fox. If you call below 1000 Hz without Hound mode while a Fox is on the band, the page warns you and switches over if you want. SuperFox comes later. Also works in the FT8 panel of remote control.

FT8 and JS8 are much more compact: small buttons in groups, status and period in a slim menu bar, and the lists grow tall enough that at Full HD you can see everything without scrolling. You set the height of the lists yourself with the handle below them, and a double click resets it to fit. The waterfall now sits to the right of the panels, and you drag its left edge to set the width. Prefer it at the bottom? Drag the ⠿ handle down or click "Below". With "Own window" it moves, controls and all, into a window of its own, say on your second screen. New in FT8 under Settings › Automation: "Log automatically" logs the QSO at the first 73 you send, without the log window, into the station's logbook when you're on remote control, otherwise into your account logbook and from there on to Wavelog.

Remote control has an "FT8 / FT4 / JS8" panel: the FT8 and JS8 pages run there, with everything they can do, at your station. Audio, frequency and PTT come from the station, you don't need a sound card or cables, and timing uses the station's clock. You can transmit when you're operating the station and are allowed to transmit. Both pages also have a few bugs fewer: FT8 sends reports and RR73 in full again (they were being cut to 13 characters), handles compound callsigns like PJ4/K1ABC, and if need be starts up to 1.5 s late instead of skipping a period. JS8 always puts messages addressed to you in the inbox, no longer puts the selected recipient in front of a CQ, and no longer drops pending auto replies.

On the APRS map you can filter under View › Heard by for one or more receivers: then you only see what, say, your local club's iGate brought into APRS-IS or a digi relayed, with its range in each direction. The filter is in the address, so /aprs-map?e=DB0XYZ can be shared. If you run an iGate, a digi or a radiosonde receiver yourself, you create an access there with your account and send straight to afu.tools: over TCP like to an APRS-IS server (iGate or radiosonde software) or over AXUDP. Then nothing goes missing that APRS-IS throws away as a duplicate. afu.tools doesn't forward any of it.

In the logbook of remote control you can now choose a contest. If you've connected Wavelog, your contest sessions from Wavelog are offered there, and every QSO goes straight into that session. Without Wavelog the contests come from the contest calendar, those running now or starting in the next three days. For 73 contests in the calendar afu.tools knows the ADIF identifier or the exchange: serial number, DOK, zone, locator and so on. With serial numbers the next one is always already in the field, counted by the page from the QSOs of this contest at the station. For anything else you set up the exchange yourself or add your own contest. QSOs from remote control now also go to Wavelog by themselves.

The control page of remote control can now be driven from a control surface on your PC. A keypad like the TreasLin N3 (and its siblings Mirabox N3 and AJAZZ AKP03) connects over USB to Chrome or Edge: you assign 6 display keys, 3 keys and 3 knobs freely, each key with short, double, long and hold, and knobs can also be turned while pressed. On top of that up to 4 layers and several profiles, switching by themselves per station, band or mode if you like, and 6 templates to get started. The displays show an icon and text, a picture, an animation, a value from the station (frequency, S meter, SWR, transmit timer, rotator, shack readings, next satellite, DX spot) or light up when their action is active. The Ulanzi D100H and any macro pad you teach by example, which works in any browser. PTT is hold only. This hasn't been tested on the real hardware yet: if you have one, you'll find the test instructions on the device page.

Radios and what they can do now lists every radio that works anywhere on afu.tools, 40 of them: 13 with remote control, 36 in Rigstudio, 26 with a built-in Antenna Bridge profile. Each radio has its own page with everything it can do, plus comparison tables for remote control and Rigstudio. For the 7 radios that remote control hasn't seen on real hardware yet (IC-7610, TS-590, FT-891, FT-991, FT-897, FT-100, ANAN), there are test instructions. If you own one: the "Rig test" panel then appears on the control page, tick things off there and send the report straight away, even from direct access. If part of your radio doesn't work yet, there's "Request support" there: callsign and email address, and we'll get back to you as soon as there's something to test.

The repeater list now also has "FM-Funknetz" under Mode: then only the stations connected to FM-Funknetz are listed, currently 162. It combines with radius and band, and the CSV export for programming software and the route into Rigstudio take the same selection. In the API it's mode=FM-Funknetz.

Remote control is out of testing and now in the menu and on the home page. It puts your radio on any screen: listen, transmit and tune with a waterfall and all the rig's controls, on a PC, tablet or phone, no app needed. The rig is run by the small afu-remote program (Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi and R2T2), which registers with afu.tools by itself, so you don't open anything on your router. On a LAN or HAMNET it works without internet too. Tested are the IC-7100, IC-7300, IC-705, IC-9700, FTX-1 and the R2T2 WebSDR, plus the IC-7610 and ANAN-7000DLE MkII, which are still waiting for someone to try them on real hardware. Included: decoders for CW, RTTY, FT8/FT4, SSTV and APRS, the time machine for rewinding, satellite operation with Doppler, watches with push notifications, the bridge for digimode and logging programs, and guest access via QR code for friends or club night. Questions and answers are under FAQ.

With an account, backups in Rigstudio now go to your account instead of the downloads folder: the full backup and the automatic one before every write. In the Backup tab they're shown in a list, and from there you load them into the page or download them as a file. Presets live there anyway if you have an account, and a button moves presets that were only stored in the browser into your account. After disconnecting, "Reset" clears channels and settings from the page, ready for the next radio. And the AnyTone D878UV now actually applies written settings; they're checked after it restarts.

The Baofeng UV-5R has now been tested on a real radio in Rigstudio: reading and writing channels, repeaters and settings. New for handhelds are the channel extras in their own column: busy channel lockout, PTT ID, scan skip, transmit inhibit, plus scan lists, scrambler, reverse and DTMF on the Quansheng, and talkaround and DMR acknowledgements on the AnyTone. The radio selection is sorted by manufacturer and searchable: just type, "uv5r" finds the UV-5R, "7300" the IC-7300. Rigstudio now also writes the Quansheng UV-K5 with F4HWN 4.x firmware. Rigstudio reads and writes its settings with F4HWN too.

In Rigstudio you can now also read and write the settings of the Baofeng UV-5R, BF-F8HP and UV-82 (67 to 69), the Quansheng UV-K5 with original firmware (102) and the AnyTone AT-D878UV (105, including your own DMR ID): squelch, transmit timeout, backlight, welcome text, keys, VFO, DTMF, FM broadcast memories and more. Rigstudio only changes the bytes of the settings you touch. Anything that could lock a radio or make it transmit by itself (password, remote kill, unlocks, position reports) isn't offered at all. Rigstudio also now hides what your radio can't do instead of just greying it out.

Rigstudio now also supports the Quansheng UV-K5, UV-K5(8), UV-K6 and UV-5R Plus: 200 channels with names, tone, DCS, power, FM and AM, plus USB with the EGZUMER firmware. You pull repeaters into the list with "＋ Repeaters", just like on the other radios. Rigstudio only writes with the stock firmware, 1o11 or EGZUMER; with any other firmware it only reads. It never touches the radio's calibration. The Quansheng has so far only been tested against the simulator, too.

In Rigstudio you can now pull repeaters straight into the channel list: in the Memory tab, "＋ Repeaters", pick location and radius, choose a band, tick the ones you want. Depending on the radio, the offset, transmit frequency, split or, for D-STAR, the repeater callsigns end up correctly in the channel. Also new: handhelds via the programming cable, the Baofeng UV-5R, BF-F8HP and UV-82, and the AnyTone AT-D878UV and D878UV II with DMR (colour code, timeslot, talkgroup). On the AnyTone, new channels go into a zone, and Rigstudio creates any missing talkgroups as contacts. Only the channel areas are read and written; everything else in the radio stays as it is. These radios have so far only been tested against the simulator; if you've got one, let us know how it goes.

The Yaesu programmer has become Rigstudio. It reads and writes memory channels, menu settings and operating values such as power, AGC or CW speed, for Yaesu, Icom (CI-V) and Kenwood, 29 radio profiles in all. New are presets: set the radio up once the way you want it for contests, POTA or at home, save that state, and one click puts it back later; afterwards "Back to before" is ready. With an account your presets are on every computer, without one they stay in your browser. Only what changes gets written, anything affecting the interface or the whole radio stays locked, and nothing is ever transmitted. It's been tested on the FTX-1 and FT-DX10; the other profiles have only run against the simulator so far, so do tell us how it works on your radio. From the repeater list, the filtered list goes into Rigstudio with one click.

New: the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA, German regulator) callsign plan, filterable. Pick a purpose and class and you'll see straight away which series are possible, say DO1 to DO9 and DA6 for a personal class E callsign, and how full they are. You can check your preferred suffix across all matching series at once. The page also classifies any callsign, including suffixes such as /Tp, and explains special callsigns, the DR series and short-term licences. The callsign search now shows what the plan says about a callsign, too.

New: Propagation. Solar flux, K index, X-rays and solar wind at a glance, an MUF map from ionosonde measurements, which bands are open by day and by night, and alongside that what RBN and PSK Reporter actually heard in the last half hour. afu.tools works it all out itself from NOAA, GFZ and GIRO data, refreshed every 15 minutes; the conditions in the portable planner now come from there as well. For your club website or forum there's a propagation image to embed, with ready-made code for HTML, BBCode and Markdown. Thanks for the suggestion!

If someone else is operating a station's radio in remote control, all the rig controls are now locked for you, instead of throwing an error after you click. You still set volume and squelch in your browser yourself. A notice at the top offers "Request control": if the operator hands over, you operate and they listen. On a receive-only station everyone has their own session, so nothing changes there.

Contrast, width, height, display style, 3D view and panadapter of the waterfall in remote control are now stored in your account: set it once and it looks the same on your computer, tablet and phone. If a device should keep its own settings, switch this off there via the waterfall's gear icon.

Owners and admins now decide themselves how a remote control station is reached (My stations › Reachable): over the internet with HAMNET as fallback, over HAMNET with the internet as fallback, or over just one of the two. afu.tools enforces "HAMNET only" itself: nobody can then get to the station over the internet.