weechat-radio:$ Supported radios

How to use it

1. Connect the radio

   Use the cable from the table below and set the radio as listed.

2. Pick it in setup

   In the app's setup page, or wcr setup in a terminal, choose your radio under Supported radios.

3. Check the port and sound card

   Setup picks the ones that look like your radio. If the names don't match, choose them from the list. Then save and start.

CAT radios need nothing else installed. The modem talks to the radio itself, so there is no Hamlib or rigctld to set up. The status bar shows the dial frequency the radio reports, and /radio qsy 7.045 moves it.

The list

You can change the preset at any time with /radio preset <name>. What each preset does: weak signals.

Single-tone radios: QDX and (tr)uSDX

These radios do not pass audio through like a normal SSB rig. They listen to the computer's audio, measure its pitch, and transmit one carrier at that pitch. That is perfect for FT8, which only ever sends one tone at a time.

Most WeeChat Radio modes send many tones at once (OFDM and ROBUST). A single-tone radio can't reproduce that, so those frames go out garbled. That's why these radios start on hf-deep (MFSK-32R), the one mode that sends a single tone at a time.

• Slow. About 99 bits per second, so a chat line takes several seconds and each frame carries at most 55 bytes.
• Keep it on hf-deep. Do not switch to hf-good, hf-poor or hf-weak on these radios.
• Big frames. A frame larger than 55 bytes cannot fit in MFSK, so it goes out in a multi-tone mode that these radios can't send cleanly. Short chat lines are fine. Long mail is not something to expect to work yet.
• Receive is normal. They hear every mode, so you still decode other stations whatever preset they use.
• Not yet tested on air. Please report how it goes.

Other things to know

• VR-N76 family and VR-N7600: the radio does the modem work itself (1200 bd packet). No sound card, but slower and VHF/UHF only. Close the radio's phone app: only one Bluetooth client at a time.
• Xiegu X6100 and X6200: one cable carries sound and CAT. The X6100's Bluetooth can carry CAT but not the data sound, so use the USB cable.
• G90, G106, X5105: the DE-19 is one USB cable with both CAT and sound. With a Digirig you need both cables from the set.
• AnyTone AT-5555N: no CAT, so frequency is set on the radio and typed into the app. The Digirig keys it.
• Retevis RT95: no CAT either. Same Digirig cable as the AT-5555N.
• IC-980 Pro: this is a generic dual-band mobile, not an Icom, and has no data port. It uses VOX, which adds a short tone before each frame so the radio keys in time. It works, but it's slower to start each transmission than a keyed radio.
• Port and sound card names are best guesses until each radio has been tested here. If setup picks the wrong one, choose yours from the list.