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Ham radio control software plus utilities - must have
Control every feature of your radio from your computer screen. Make a change on the screen and the change instantly happens on the radio. Make a change on the radio and that
change instantly shows on the computer screen. Wow! Switch modes from USB to LSB to CW to RTTY to AM to FM to whatever. Instantly switch from one band to another AND
also have ANY desired frequency in that band show on the screen and on the radio. Click a control on the screen and scan an entire band, OR scan a selected portion of any
band OR scan selected memory channels OR ... well, you get the idea.
To get an idea of how your computer screen could look, take a look at the screen for my Icom IC746 Pro. This is the Full Screen mode, so the menu bar is not shown. Pressing F4 will toggle the menu bar in and out. Notice near the right that there is a little reminder that the F4 key will bring back the menu bar. The frequency is set to 570 on the AM band for a local broadcast radio station.
Want to instantly jump to a frequency of 18,110.00 on 17 meters? Just click on that frequency on the 30 meter bar. Notice that there is a bar for all the bands. They do not all fit on the screen, but they can be scrolled up and down. More about those band bars later!
Later in the listing there is a list of the radios that this software has been tested on.
About that frequency display. Here is the default display for 14,100.00 on 20 Meters. Notice that each digit has a bar above and below it. All but one of the bars is gray. The bars above and below the fourth digit "0", are highlighted. This is the digit that will change when you scroll the mouse. Want the highlighted bars on another digit? Just click on that digit and those two bars light up and now your mouse is changing THAT one digit. WOW! No more getting your wrist tired spinning the frequency dial.
Actually the default colors for frequency display are boring, so here is the frequency display after I have "colorized" it and added some indicators to show modes in use.
The Advanced Options pop up allows instantly changing many important internal settings. (Settings for Icom 746Pro shown here. Advanced Options for your particular radio will be different based on your radio's capabilities and features.) Shown here is the screen for changing the VOX settings on my IC746Pro. I find it difficult to change these during a QSO using the radio menu, but it is trivial to do from inside Ham Radio Deluxe. It is like having a newer, more powerful radio!
Here is the advanced option screen for CW settings. No more radio commands of "Press the MENU key until Menu 2 shows in the display and then press the CW key then...". Just click a slider and move to the desired value. No navigating through several layers of menus on your radio.
Here we see some of the Band Bars. We are in 20 Meters, so that bar is "lit up". Notice that the 30 Meter bar below it is not lit up. If we happen to scroll outside the 20 meter band, the 20 meter band will also go dim to let us know that we are out of band. Above the frequency buttons is the "Fine" frequency bar for making small frequency changes. The 20 meter bar below the frequency buttons is the "Coarse" frequency bar. No matter which band you are in, the top bar will be the "Fine" frequency control and its numbers will be correct for the band in use. The "BSP" button on the left of the frequency buttons is the "Band Spread" button and clicking on it will bring up the Brand Spread pop up. By the way, you can change the position and colors of the Frequency Buttons or remove them altogether. It just keeps getting better and better!
Put clocks and date setting on the screen. Choose between Local, GMT and UTC time. Use 2 digit or 4 digit years.
If your computer is connected to the internet, just click on the DX SPOTS and suddenly you have a pop up at the bottom of the screen showing the DX stations that have been reported recently. Click on one and you are instantly on that frequency and mode ready to make a contact! WOW! Notice that you can have the program show ALL the reported spots or just those for one band!
Just like the DX Spots, there is a Shortwave button on the menu bar. Click the SW button and a HUGE list of shortwave stations is shown. Have you heard news of an earthquake in South Africa? Just click on the South Africa station at the bottom of the shortwave screen shown below and you are instantly at the correct frequency and mode for that South African station! Also, you can often get better news of what is going on in America by listening to foreign stations! If you haven't listened to the short wave stations, you don't know what you are missing. There are music stations that specialize in certain types of music, there are news only stations, religous stations, policital analysis stations, foreign language stations, etc. There is something there for everyone!
Click on the LogBook menu bar button and up comes the logbook. Notice that there are two tabs at the top left of the log book screen. You can now use those two tabs to instantly switch between the control screen and the log book screen. Click the ADD button in the log book screen and your frequency and mode settings and the correct time are copied into the logbook and you are ready to enter the call sign of your contact! Notice you can also sort the existing entries in many different ways!
Do you work satellites? If so, a single click puts you in the satellite screen!
This is a feature I use often, the slider bars. You can press a function key to bring them up or just click the "Sliders" button on the menu bar. You can customize the color of the slider bars, the order of the slider bars, and you can add and delete slider bars. If you need to turn the volume down quickly, no need to lunge for the AF Level knob on your radio, just click the AF slider bar and move it to the left. Of course, when you turn the AF knob on the radio, the former setting returns on the radio and the onscreen slider bar repositions to match!
I have broken the slider bar screen captures into two sets so they will be larger in the display. Here is the left half of my slider bar screen.
Here is the right half of my slider bar screen. You can customize yours any way you want it, including colors!
I have mentioned the "Menu Bar" several times, but haven't shown it. I have broken this into two views, left and right halves of the screen so that it is easier to see in detail. Here is the left half of the screen.
Here is the right half of the Menu Bar.
By looking at the Menu Bar, you will notice that there are a very LARGE number of features we haven't even touched on. Notice the Backup button near the right end? Yep, you can click that and backup every setting, every memory channel, every frequency, Everything, and it will ALL be restored when you restart Ham Radio Deluxe!
I just can't skip over that REMOTE button on the menu bar. You can set this program up so that you can control it from another Ham Radio Deluxe program on another computer through the INTERNET! Yes, you can sit in your office and control your radio at home and hear the audio on your computer speakers! One of my neighbors uses this to control his home HF rig when he is away on vacation!
On the left of the Menu Bar you will notice buttons for Mapper, DM780 and PSK31. Clicking one of those takes you into another program with its own screens for other functions. The DM780 program is an amazing program. The "DM" stands for Digital Master. Using that program you can work the following Digital Modes!
The bottom of the screen in ALL these modes is a customizable waterfall display. You can click on a signal in the waterfall and instantly your radio is tuned to that frequency and you are ready to begin a QSO!
The thing I like the most about DM780 is that it not only works all those digital modes, but that you don't have to remember the sub-modes. There are selection buttons for them! Thus you can switch between DominoEX-4, DominoEX-8 and DominoEX-16 just with the click of a selector button! Click another button and you are instantly in Olivia 250-8. Click another button and you move to Olivia 1000-32. (There is an excellent article on the Olivia mode in the December 2008 issue of QST magazine.)
Of course DM780 has a built in GreyLine screen showing the sun rise and sun set line for the entire world (the Grey Scale). However, I think the Grey Line program that is built into HRD (The MAPPER button on the main menu) is even slicker! The Grey Line program inside HRD lets you pick the views, such as entire world or only certain continents. Pick the USA and you can even have it show the individual state border outlines!
Here is a custom screen done with an earlier version of HRD. You can do even more with the current version.
I could do another 10,000 words on this amazing program and I still would not have covered it all! I'll mention just one more great feature and end there.
The defualt grey and white button colors are pretty drab as shown here. The buttons that have ON/OFF states are shown in dim white for OFF and bright white for ON. The ON buttons are Ant 1, Sharp, and TX-Wide. It's not easy to tell quickly which ones are ON and which are OFF, is it? Let's fix that!
I have not only set mine to White on Green, but I have also set the buttons that have an "ON/OFF" state so that the "OFF" state is White on Green while the "ON" state is White on Red! Now I know INSTANTLY at a GLANCE which features are ON and which are OFF! Only Ant-1 and TX-Wide are ON in this view.
I have tried lots of ham radio control programs, some costing a lot of money. This one, Ham Radio Deluxe, is the best of the bunch. It does not get any better than this program. Remember, even as long as this listing is, I have only covered a SMALL FRACTION of the features of this amazing program. You will have loads of fun doing things with your radio that you either found too hard to do from the radio front panel or that you forgot your radio could do! You also become a much better operator. No more hitting the wrong button on the radio or working through a maze of menus to get to a seldom used but important feature! Just fire up HRD and experience a NEW radio, YOUR radio on steroids! That's Ham Radio Deluxe!
The radios supported by Ham Radio Deluxe are:
HRD comes with these Dem-O-Matic radios: ORION, K2, TS-480, TS-570 and TS-2000
Installation is simple, just Install and Start!
MINIMUM COMPUTER SPECIFICATION
HRD: 500MHz CPU, 512MB RAM and 20MB of disk storage.
DM780: 1GHz CPU, 1024MB RAM and 50MB storage (or more if using SSTV). DM780 uses more resources than HRD when decoding many signals simultaneously.
* Study questions and answers for the Tech, General and Extra Ham Radio Exams.
* Information on the Amazing Olivia Digital Mode that can copy signals that are 20dB BELOW the noise level!
* The MOST AMAZING ham band chart I have ever seen!
* Additional full color ham band charts from various sources.
* The entire Ham Radio Deluxe manual in PDF format.
* The entire DM780 manual in PDF format.
* Various useful ham radio information products.
* The BEST and MOST AMAZING computer program for learning CW in the ENTIRE WORLD.
* Various ham radio web links for projects, USB interfaces, and lots more.
