Versions:

  • 0.2.2

ham-tools, published by Guru-RF, is a small suite of command-line amateur-radio utilities written in C, designed to bring essential station and DX information directly to the terminal. The package consolidates five focused tools into a single lightweight distribution, each addressing a common task faced by amateur-radio operators during daily operation, contesting, and DX chasing. The qrz utility performs callsign lookups against the QRZ.com database, allowing operators to retrieve registration details for a station without opening a web browser. The qte tool converts an address or location into a bearing and Maidenhead grid-square locator, which supports antenna pointing, distance estimation, and logging workflows. The remaining three utilities—dxsummit, dxheat, and holycluster—are live DX-cluster viewers that stream spot information from the DX Summit, DXHeat, and HolyCluster services respectively, giving operators real-time visibility into currently active rare or sought-after stations on the bands. As a command-line suite, ham-tools fits naturally into the amateur-radio software category alongside logging programs, propagation tools, and digital-mode applications, and it is particularly suited to operators who prefer scriptable, terminal-based workflows or who run minimal or headless systems such as single-board computers at remote stations. Its use cases include quick station identification during pileups, accurate beam-heading calculation for directional antennas, grid-square determination for VHF and UHF records, and continuous monitoring of cluster traffic to catch new DX entities as they appear. The software is currently available in version 0.2.2, which is the only published release to date, with a single version listed in the catalog. The early version number indicates an actively developing project, and operators adopting it at this stage can expect a compact, focused toolset whose individual utilities each map to one well-defined amateur-radio task.

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