FreeDV — who is on digital voice

FreeDV is the open-source digital voice mode for HF. Its current mode RADE sends speech in about 1.5 kHz of bandwidth and stays intelligible where SSB has long disappeared into the noise. The community is small and meets on a handful of frequencies — above all 14.236 MHz — and reports to each other on FreeDV Reporter (qso.freedv.org): who is online, on which frequency, who is transmitting, who hears whom.

HAM-Tools brings exactly that board into the app. The module does not decode any signal — that remains FreeDV GUI's job, but its QSOs land in the logbook automatically (see below).

New in 1.47

The whole module is new: Reporter list and map, double-click into the QSO form, FreeDV stations as a spot source in the DX cluster, and the FREEDV submode in the ADIF export.

Opening the module

FreeDV sits in the sidebar with the main applications, below WSPR. Like Logbook and WSPR it takes over the whole window: connection, identity and status message on the left, the online stations on the right. ‹ Overview takes you back.

Connecting

Connect at the top right. After a second or two the list fills, the status pill turns green, and Last event ticks with every server ping. If the connection drops, HAM-Tools retries on its own — after five seconds at first, then at growing intervals up to half a minute; the reason stays red in the pill meanwhile.

Two ways to sign in:

Mode	What happens
View	You see all online stations but do not appear on qso.freedv.org yourself. No callsign needed.
Visible	HAM-Tools appears with your callsign, locator and frequency in the list — as receive-only, as long as no decoder is running.

Callsign and locator come from Settings → Station. If one is missing, "Visible" silently falls back to "View". Disconnect first to switch modes.

Public

In "Visible" mode your callsign, locator, frequency and status message are visible to anyone who opens qso.freedv.org — just like with any other FreeDV client.

Status message: up to 80 characters of free text others see next to your callsign ("QRV 20m, hexbeam"). It goes out automatically on connect; Send pushes changes. Only effective in "Visible" mode.

Connect automatically when opened: tick it and the module connects by itself every time you open it.

Station list

Column	Meaning
Dot	red transmitting now · green heard something in the last two minutes · blue online. An ear symbol marks receive-only stations.
Callsign, Locator	as reported by the station; transmitting stations in bold
Freq (kHz), Band	the station's dial frequency; empty until it reports one
Mode	RADEV1, 700D … according to the client
Hearing	last decoded counterpart with SNR
km, Bearing	computed from your own locator
Message	the station's status message
Updated	when this row last changed

Above it: a band filter (only bands with someone on them), a search field over callsign, locator and message, and the List / Map switch. Right-click the header to show or hide columns; the app remembers order and widths.

On the Reporter on the left shows the counters and active bands — click a band to set the filter.

Map

Every station with a locator gets a dot in the same colour logic as the list, your own QTH a house symbol. The buttons at the top right: zoom, Show all, Whole world, callsign labels on/off and Lines from your own location — great circles to all stations, handy to see where the antenna would have to point. Clicking a dot also selects the station in the list.

Into the logbook

Double-click a station (or context menu → Log this station) pre-fills the logbook's QSO form: callsign, locator, frequency, band and mode DIGITALVOICE with submode FREEDV. The status message goes into the notes.

At the same time, the same things happen as with a spot click in the DX cluster:

• If CAT is connected, the rig jumps to the frequency and into the data filter (USB-D above 10 MHz, LSB-D below) — FreeDV runs through the sound card, not the microphone.
• If the rotor control is active and "rotate on spot click" is on, the antenna turns to the bearing.

The logbook does not come to the front by itself — the double-click prepares the QSO, logging happens in the logbook.

Stations in the DX cluster

While the module is connected, the FreeDV stations also flow into the DX cluster as spots with the source FreeDV: into the spot list, the bandmap and the world map. An online station with a frequency is a spot "X is on 14236 kHz", a reception report a spot "X hears Y at 9 dB" — with X as the spotter, just like in the classic cluster.

The spot list has its own FreeDV source checkbox (yellow) for that, as does the cluster bar in the logbook. If you do not want the stations in the cluster, switch the feed off in Settings → FreeDV.

Visible mode: reporting your frequency

In "Visible" mode HAM-Tools reports your frequency to the Reporter — from CAT or, without CAT, from the frequency field of the QSO form. While you turn the VFO the app waits for one second of rest before sending, so the server does not get a report for every detent. Reported frequency in the connection panel shows what the Reporter knows about you.

FreeDV GUI as the decoder

To listen and talk you still need FreeDV GUI (freedv.org). The two programs complement each other:

1. In FreeDV GUI under Tools → Options → Reporting enable QSO logging, host 127.0.0.1, port 2237.
2. In HAM-Tools under Settings → External Loggers enable the WSJT-X / … / FreeDV bridge on port 2237.
3. Log QSO in FreeDV GUI — the QSO appears in HAM-Tools with MODE=DIGITALVOICE and SUBMODE=FREEDV, the way LoTW, eQSL and Club Log expect it.

FreeDV GUI takes callsigns from the end-of-over signal into its log selection; HAM-Tools shows them in parallel via the Reporter list.

Good to know

• The Reporter protocol is not officially documented. HAM-Tools speaks it the way FreeDV GUI and the RADE apps for Android and iOS do. After a server update the connection may stumble for a while — an app update fixes that.
• The server also broadcasts a group chat; HAM-Tools deliberately does not show it.
• No rig needed to watch: the module works on any Mac with internet. Only Visible mode with frequency and logging via FreeDV GUI need the station.