Cookies are not used on this site but 'local storage' is. Local storage is essential for so many features the site won't work without it.
There are no third party trackers, no advertising, no Facebook logons etc.
Local storage is also known as web storage or DOM storage web storage
If preferences and callsigns are not saved, turn on local storage for your specific browser, eg. how do I turn on web storage in Firefox?

Its used for saving Rx & Tx drop down menus, user prefs, saved search params, saved tables, saved the stats on the stats page, advanced search, auto search, notifications and version updating.

Security and privacy: try Brave browser, I love it. Good security, terrific speed, good compatibility and layout. It uses the Google Chrome public domain engine but has none of Google's tracking, Firefox is clunky by comparison. Check it out and note who created it and why.

Brave on Mac, Linux and Windows is my primary development environment.
Safari: runs fine but can hang on to cached data for over a day so that recent code updates sometimes don't appear.
Firefox: used to break some features on all platforms but the latest versions seem to be working fine.
Microsoft Edge: is being rebuilt by Microsoft based on Chromium open source code but still delivers poor appearance and compatibility.
The others: there is no browser detection so it will try to run in anything but will certainly fail in older browsers. MS Internet Explorer is not supported.
Mobile devices: tests OK in Brave/Chrome/Safari/Firefox on iPhone 11 and iPad Air 2, your mileage will vary. Some features are not available on touch screens.

Most bugs are able to be fixed quickly but sometimes its browser age or quirks.
- adding new features means more bugs so your patience and assistance in reporting them is appreciated.
- blank map page: now rare, sometimes your browser has cached old files. Try Google [ how to clear my browser cache ]
Bug reports to phil at perite dot com are welcome as are suggestions for features and improvements.

Search view:
- callsign drop down menus: customise the order by dragging callsigns up or down.
- click the pink 'advanced search' at the bottom right of the tab bar to open the Advanced search panel.
- as well as the advanced menu selections you can edit the advanced query text directly; if you know a bit of SQL you can generate your own additional WHERE clauses using OR and other functionality.
- Alt click the Search button to generate a link to this site with your search parameters. Copy and paste it into an email or a forum and click on it to launch this app and automatically carry out your search.

Table view:
- click a date to toggle it between local and UTC.
- click a callsign to show the country an amateur callsign is registered in.
- click a column heading to sort the column up and down.

Map Legend:
- click the [distance] button to toggle through three other Legends featuring 'SpotQ', 'QRP (Watts)' and 'Band Count'.
- click any callsign to zoom to that station for more station information.
- in the 'Band Count' legend, click a count number to show only that band, click a dash - to restore all paths.
- click the ▽ down box to hide Google's map controls which is handy on phone screens.

Paths on the Map: click any Path to view its Spot data. Click a dashed Long Path to see distance and dB free space path loss at the path frequency.

Map Markers:
- click for station information, it's pretty obvious but some people miss it.
- right click a marker to open the Map Extras window and draw it's 4 and 6 char locator squares or use the Great Circle Ruler.

The Map:
- right click on the map to open the Map Extras window to draw a Great Circle ruler. See the Great Circle Ruler entry below.
• search for spots between any two user defined points on the map. See the Great Circle Ruler entry below.
• continuous 6 figure Maidenhead locators are displayed to the left of the Night button as you move the mouse around the Map.
• toggling between 'callsigns' and 'dots' redraws the map allowing you to switch between balloon tracks and normal view (in prefs) without a fresh search.

Chart: the dots are band colour coded. Mouse over or touch them for their spot details.

Stats: the upper section of the main stats page directly queries the database for global db information or if you enter your callsign, your own information.

Timeout problems and search limitations on the WSPRnet.org site inspired the creation of a clone database by the guys at WsprDaemon.org
Their original database using the Timescale postgres engine is still in use by wsprd.vk7jj.com but not by wspr.rocks
wspr.rocks uses a new database engine called ClickHouse

Arne from wspr.live put it together and maintains it. The version used by this app is hosted on the WSPR Daemon servers.
ClickHouse is special. It contains every spot ever reported (2,669,365,033 spots as I type this) going all the way back to 2008 yet is amazingly fast.
Under the 'advanced search' tab, selecting "custom..." from the "period start" menu allows you to select spots from any date / time since 2008.

Wild card characters are the same as before:
_ represents a single character or number
% matches zero or more characters or numbers

Arne's database is updated continuously in real time from the WSPR Daemon database and is some 30 seconds or so behind.
Note: WSPR spot data is freely and publicly downloadable from https://wspr.live/
Bonus fact: if you open the Console in your browser the ClickHouse db query time for each of your searches is displayed.

Wildcards are special characters used to represent zero or more other characters in callsign searches.
The underscore _ represents one single character
The percent sign % represents zero or more characters

Examples:
VK_PD would find VK0PD and VK3PD and VK7PD etc
VK7JJ% would find VK7JJ and VK7JJ1 and VK7JJ/1 etc
VK%M would find VK4EMM and VK2IJM and VK7AM and VK3KZM etc
0_4% is used for balloons and finds all callsigns with zero as the 1st char, anything as the 2nd char, 4 as the 3rd char, and zero or more following chars

The unique checkbox applies only to the values you place in the Tx and Rx search boxes.
The choices of time, band, mode etc still limit the spots returned but the test for 'equality' applies only to the callsigns.
Consider the stations Bill, Annie and 'anyone':

1. unique on Rx='Bill' and Tx='Bill'
This search is really useful if Bill's station receives AND transmits.
- it returns one single spot from every station heard by Bill AND one spot from every station who Bill heard.
- those spots are the first spots found in the database and are not sorted for best SNR or distance.
- if 'all bands' is selected you still get only the first spot found regardless of whether there were other spots on other bands.
The WSPRnet.org unique search behaves in the same way. Note: the new http://wspr.live beta does include one spot for each band found.

2. unique on Rx='Bill' and Tx='Annie'
- returns the first spot found in the database between Bill and Annie.
- if 'all bands' is selected you still only get the first spot found regardless of whether there were other spots on other bands between Bill and Annie.
The WSPRnet.org unique search behaves in the same way. Note: the new http://wspr.live beta does include one spot for each band found.

3. unique on Rx='Annie' and Tx='anyone'
- returns one single spot from every station who Annie heard.
- again, those spots are the first spots found in the database regardless of whether there were other spots on other bands.
The WSPRnet.org unique search behaves in the same way. Note: the new http://wspr.live beta does include one spot for each band found.

4. unique on Rx='anyone' and Tx='Annie'
- similar to (3) above

5. unique on Rx='anyone' and Tx='anyone'
- returns the first spot found for all stations
- only one spot is returned for each pair of stations regardless of whether there were other spots between them on other bands.
The WSPRnet.org unique search behaves in the same way. Note: the new http://wspr.live beta does include one spot for each band found.

Unique is handy for reducing the number of spots returned so you can stay under the spot count limit when searching over long time periods.
Its good for tracking balloons, only one spot is needed to show each location on the track thus enabling tracking over longer periods of time.

Advanced search is accessed via the red 'advanced search' link at the left under the tab bar.

- advanced search applies extra criteria in addition to your choices in the normal search.
- you can edit the advanced query text field directly; if you know some SQL you can generate additional WHERE clauses using OR and other functionality.
- selecting "custom..." from the "period start" menu allows you to select spots from any date / time since 2008.

The map can display two draggable markers. Search at either marker location or along the path between them.
- see the Great Circle Ruler in Charts and Visualisation below.

Auto-search gets you the fastest possible map updates!
Because WSJT uploads user spots every even minute the uneven minute auto search captures the very latest data. Do not keep clicking the search button!
By default, Auto-search commences searching on the first uneven numbered minute, two minutes after you click the auto-search check box.

You can change the two minute default period (via ☰ prefs) to any value from 2 minutes to 60 minutes.
A 3 to 8 second random interval is added to the ☰ prefs period to avoid collisions with other users.
If a search times out the failure is ignored and does not alter the next search time.

Note: if your computer goes to sleep or browser becomes inactive in a background tab the timer may stop or run very slowly.
Open your browser Console to view a running log of auto-search activity.

To create a link containing a search URL (1) set the search values to whatever you want, then (2) hold down the alt/option key and click the [Search WSPRD] button.
- the link code is placed on your clipboard, copy and paste the link into your email or document.
- advanced search parameters are not supported, sorry.

Search for the spot or spots you would like to create the link to.
You can collect spots from either the table or from the map:

From the table
(1) hold down the altKey / optionKey and click on the date of each individual spot you want to link to.
(2) to finish collecting spots, click any date without the altKey held down.

From the map
(1) hold down the altKey / optionKey and click on the path of each individual spot you want to link to.
(2) to finish collecting spots, click any path without the altKey held down.
Seleting the red dashed long path is not supported.

A URL with the spots you have collected is placed on your clipboard, paste it into a link in an email or document.

Conduct a search and then select 'Store table...' from the Table options menu.
Select 'Restore table...' to load a previously stored table.
The data is saved within your browser in an area called "local storage" in a similar way to cookies.
The data will be lost if you empty your browser cache or if this app changes to another domain.

Note: This feature is designed for mobile phones and tablets that can't handle saved files. On desktops you should use the 'Export spots to disk...' option for more secure storage.

Enter the callsigns and set the band and other menu values you wish to save and click [Save search] in the ☰ prefs.
Ticking the [restore] checkbox automatically restores your saved search values every time you refresh or open the web page.
Ticking and unticking the [restore] checkbox does not delete the saved values, it just triggers the restoration.
Note: Advanced search is now saved along with normal search. Advanced criteria are not visible unless that panel is open your so search results may be unexpected.

SpotQ is the relative Quality of a spot, ie. how "good" it is.
The best spot is the spot that was received over the GREATEST distance at the LOWEST power and the BEST signal to noise ratio.

The formula for calculating SpotQ was changed on 2nd Feb 2020
• The original formula worked well but had one downside in that normalisation made it relative to a given set of search results rather than being an absolute value.
• The new formula is simple and generates absolute values so SpotQ can now be compared between multiple stations and multiple searches as per the Stats feature.

The old formula was (Kilometres ÷ Watts x SNR) where SNR = WSPR SNR in dB normalised to a decimal value between 1 and 2.
The new formula is (Kilometres ÷ Watts x SNR) but SNR now = (WSPR SNR in dB +36)/36

The reason SNR needs manipulation is to ensure it is always positive, has sufficient resolution to separate stations only a dB or a kilometre apart and is short enough to fit in a Table column.
SpotQ is very useful for comparing and improving your own antennas and receiver systems as well as comparing the performance of different receiving stations.

Click the [Stats] tab to display the statistics page.
Add a callsign in the 'stats call' field (in the top dark grey page header) and click its 'collect stats' checkbox.
- regardless of whether you specifically search for that callsign or not if it's is found in any search results its stats are updated automatically.
- you can have up to 6 stats callsigns in total but only two can collect stats simultaneously.

Stats are great for comparing the performance of two antennas or radios or users.
- deleting a Stats callsign permanently deletes any stats collected for it.

Database search
- the upper part of the stats page allows you to search the entire db for specific information like average distance, SNR etc.
- enter a callsign in the 'db call' field to get results for just that call, leave it blank to get the max, min, averages etc for 'everybody'.

Click the [highlight duplicates] button in the table menu.
The first duplicate for every set of duplicates will be highlighted. There may be multiple sets.
Click anywhere on a coloured line to see the frequency and SNR differences between each spot in that duplicate set.
To see the actual list of duplicate spots in any set of duplicates, open your browser console.

Duplicates are caused by:
• multiple receivers operating under one callsign.
• mains hum: look for frequency differences that are multiples of 50 or 60 Hz, they can be caused by the sending or receiving station.
• spurious / distorted transmitter output: look for multiple signals of a similar strength that are not harmonically related but are within a few Hz of the main signal frequency.
• "normal" transmitter harmonics when within range of a strong signal: usually you see the main signal at something like +10dB with symmetrical harmonics down around -20dB

1. Search on one band only for 200 or fewer spots.
2. Click the Search button and wait until the spot table appears.
3. Choose [WSPR audio passband] from the Charts menu to show spot distribution within the 200Hz wide WSPR passband.
4. Mouse over the chart to see the number of spots and their frequency.
Search for a tx station that uses a GPS disciplined oscillator and you can check your receiver frequency accuracy within 1Hz.

There is only one single path between any two stations so there can only be one path displayed regardless of the number of transmissions between them.
- the path that is drawn is for the first spot encountered in the database that meets your search query.
- that would normally be the most recent spot although different advanced search options could change that.
There may well be other spots in the table on the same path on the same band or on different bands or with differing times.

The following charts only make sense when searching for specific spot data:
Frequency vs time of day: search for a particular callsign or wildcard.
SNR vs Time: search for a particular reporter or reporter/transmitting station combination.
Rx Azimuth: search for a particular reporter.
Tx Azimuth: search for a particular transmitting station.
Compass.
Mousing over or clicking a chart's coloured dots shows each spot's information

When in the Map view click the [night] button to show or hide the night overlay.
The overlay defaults to "now" and shows night + civil, nautical & astronomical twilight at the current date/time.
Every time you click the night button its status is automatically remembered and restored.

The night overlay position can be moved to the time of any particular spot:
- click on any spot marker on the map to open that marker info window.
- click the link [show night as at this spot time] to position the overlay.

The overlay position defaults to "now" for every new search or when loading previously saved spots or whenever the [night] button is toggled.
Limitations: 1) some early browsers cannot handle the date calculations. 2) it does not work for tables saved in early versions.

The 'watts' slider in Map view shows and hides spot paths based on the Tx power of the spot.
Search for your chosen set of spots with the 'unique' checkbox ticked.
Move the slider. It starts showing all spots and then hides them incrementally down to 1 milliwatt.
The two sliders can't be used simultaneously because they try to show and hide the same spots based on different criteria.

The 'hours' slider control in Map view shows and hides spot paths based on the hour-of-day of the spot.
Search for 24 hours or more for your chosen set of spots with the 'unique' checkbox ticked:
- the [night] button is automatically activated when you move the slider. Turn it on and off yourself to suit.
Move the slider. It starts at 00 hours and increments hourly to 24 hours.
When the slider is first moved the night overlay will jump from 'now' to 00 hours, after that it will move incrementally.
Note: the slider shows and hides only the paths already displayed on the map, it does not create new paths for any additional spots on the same frequency; see The Map entry above.
The two sliders can't be used simultaneously as they try to show and hide the same spots based on different criteria.

Right click anywhere on the map to open the map Extras window and then click to display the ruler.
Hint: you can zoom and pan in before opening the ruler as it adapts its size to the view.
Drag the markers to any two points on the map:
- click the pale blue ruler path to display an info-box relevant to that location.
- right clicking a marker is a short cut for closing the ruler.
- the ruler can toggle between a geodesic or straight path which affects the appearance but not the measurements.

The ruler is accurate to a meter and can measure the length of wire antennas in satellite view, just ignore the 'km' label. I built my 160m loops with an early version of it.
If the path length becomes greater than the diameter of the earth it flips to the other side of the planet.

Show propagation along the path.
- clicking [fetch A⇢B or B⇢A propagation] searches the database for spots between the A and B marker locations.
- you can select the hours, mode and band yourself as per a normal search but unique is always set to ON.
- the Band Count legend automatically displays to show the band count.
- in the Band Count legend, where there are spots on a band, click on a band count number to display only that band. Click a - to show all bands again.

Show propagation at a marker location.
- shows both rx and tx spots at the marker location.
.
The area covered by an A or B marker is the Maidenhead square described by the first two digits of their locators.
- if you zoom in closer the area is reduced to the first three digits of their locators.

WSPRnet.org's map page draws only short paths regardless of whether a spot is long or short path.
The short path is known as the great circle path and is the shortest path between two points on the surface of a sphere.

Spot data can't tell if the path should be short or long, that's up to you to figure out based on your experience, your antenna, time of day, propagation etc.

You can display the long path for any spot on the map:
• click on any short path then click the [toggle this path as long] link in the pop-up dialog.
• click on the long path dashed line to show the free space path loss and distance for both paths.

Showing the long path shows you what the path looks like, the comparative path losses, what part of the day/night cycle is involved and what the distance and beam heading is. Displaying those things hopefully helps you figure it out.

The "hours" slider available in Map view is also a good way to identify long paths:
- make sure the night overlay is visible and drag the slider
- any 30m or 40m paths that are longer than 3,500km with the path in daylight are very likely to be long.

Identifying long path spots on the map has been a personal holy grail. This is a 30m & 40m only feature.

What characterises a long path on 30m or 40m? Daylight propagation where the path is longer than 3,000k makes it very likely. Google it.
The 'guess' algorithm is conservative and highlights 30m & 40m paths longer than 4,000km where the centre of the path is close to solar noon at the time of the spot.

Search for 24 hours of unique spots for a 30m or 40m station either Rx or Tx with known good DX capabilities then go to Map view.
- click any path and then click '[guess 30m & 40m long paths]' Any 30m long paths will turn white and 40m will turn black, an alert shows the count.

When long paths are found move the hours slider with night turned on and watch the relationship between solar noon and the highlighted paths.
- the majority of long path propagation is between the northern and southern hemispheres, searching for ZL% or VK7% reporters on 40m will find you some.

Each marker is drawn on the map in the centre of the locator sent in your transmission as specified in WSJT-X or other software.

right click the map anywhere to open the Map Extras window to draw 4 or 6 char locator squares at the map click location.
The dimensions of the most recently drawn locator square are displayed in the status -> line.

Moving the mouse around the map gives a continuous readout of the 6 figure locator beneath the mouse pointer.

A six figure locator square is about 9.2k wide and 4.6k high at the equator.
Because locator squares are bounded by longitudes they narrow as you move towards the poles, DP0GVN's locator IB59uh is 3k wide
A four figure locator square is 2° wide and 1° high, equal in size to 24 six figure locator squares. A 4 figure locator could position you up to 100k away from your real QTH.

Conduct your search as normal.
- select 'Export spots to Google Earth...' from the Table options menu and save the file on your computer desktop.
- presuming you have a copy of the Google Earth application on your computer, double-click the file to open it in Google Earth.
- Google Earth has limited ability to display data but clicking on a marker gives basic spot information.
- multiple spots show up as a bunch of satellites around a marker, improving how that works is on the non urgent to-do list.

Dave VE3KCL is a prolific balloonist and has done some great work, his pages are excellent to learn from.
Dave works with QRPLabs gear, click a flight name on their balloon page to find a balloon callsign to search for.
Each flight transmits normal WSPR spots and telemetry spots at different time slots.
Eg. Flight U4B-17: Callsign is VE3KCL, WSPR transmission minute :02 and telemetry in minute :04 and telemetry call 0x4xxx
- flight U4B-17 transmits a normal WSPR spot with correct locator information at 2 minutes past every hour, UTC time.
- flight U4B-17 transmits a telemetry spot with a 'fake' callsign and incorrect locator and other spot information at 4 minutes past every hour, UTC time.
Normally your ☰ prefs are set to hide balloon telemetry so you never see any spot starting with 'Q' or Zero.

Example search for the balloon track for Flight U4B-17
(1) in the ☰ prefs panel click the Map paths 'WSPR spots' radio button. Failure to do this will draw the balloon path as if it was normal spots.
(2) in the ☰ prefs panel click 'hide' balloon telemetry.
(3) click the 'advanced search' link below the 'faq' tab.
(4) at the bottom of the advanced search panel, select "2" from the 'minutes' menu and click 'add query'. (2 is the WSPR transmission minute for U4B-17 from Dave's page above)
(5) conduct a search for the balloon callsign VE3KCL for 3 weeks with the unique box checked.
Click the map tab to see the path; clicking a path segment shows the speed for that segment.
- balloon tracks show abrupt direction changes because each TX location is the centre of a 4 figure roughly 50km wide grid square.

Example search for balloon telemetry for Flight U4B-17
(1) in the ☰ prefs panel click the Map paths 'WSPR spots' radio button.
(2) in the ☰ prefs panel click 'show' balloon telemetry.
(3) in the advanced search panel set the Balloon transmission time offset menu to "4" minutes. (4 is the WSPR transmission minute for U4B-17 from Dave's page above)
(4) substitute the underscore _ character for each x in 0x4xxx and search for 0_4___ as the transmit telemetry callsign.
(5) turn on unique and conduct a search for the telemetry callsign.
(6) on the map page, click any balloon icon to see the telemetry.
- the balloon icons appear randomly positioned because their locator information is telemetry data. The paths show who reported the spot as with normal spots.
- lots of conflicting telemetry is caused previous balloons using that time slot; reduce your search time to the minimum necessary to get valid data.
- Altitude, temperature, speed, battery voltage etc are encoded in the rest of the callsign and other WSPR fields.
- Here is an excellent video overview by Hans Summers of QRP Labs

Don't forget to switch the ☰ prefs panel back to WSPR settings for normal use.
Hint: toggling between 'callsigns' and 'dots' redraws the map; you can switch between balloon tracks and normal view (in prefs) without a fresh search.

Search for a balloon as per the Display a balloon track above.
When the Table is filled with Tx spots from the balloon:
- select 'Export balloons to Google Earth...' from the Table options menu and save the file on your computer desktop.
- your exported file will now contain the balloon's track in KML format, double click it to launch Google Earth.
- markers are centered in each WSPR locator square.
- the above procedure should work with any moving transmitter such as a boat, car or aircraft.

Select 'Export spots to disk' from the Table options menu and save the file on your computer desktop.
The .json file is in JSON format and is not designed to be edited, only saved or archived for reloading later.
Import previously saved .json files by selecting 'Import spots from disk...' from the Table options menu.

Only plain text .txt files containing Comma Separated Values (CSV) can be imported. Zipped files are not supported, unzip them first.
File size is hard limited to 3,500 kilobytes because that's the effective limit of Google Maps and Charts.

You can directly import WSPRnet CSV files from their download page provided you remove enough spots to reduce the file size as above.
Editing them not a problem as long as you guarantee to preserve the 15 item comma delimited values as per the WSPRnet specification.

Note: The files are ordinary text files containing comma separated values and MUST have a .txt extension (not .csv) or they will not be imported.

It's not a true ping because Javascript can't ping, it's a timed request for the favicon icon on the WsprDaemon website.
That site is very fast so it's more a measure of your distance from the server or how bad your internet service provider may be.