DXHunter

DXHunter is a DX cluster client built for one purpose: helping you chase new DXCC entities, new bands, new modes and new slots as well as any of the Hamaward.cloud awards.

Every spot arriving from the cluster is cross-referenced against your logbook (Log4OM or Ham Radio Deluxe) and classified — New DXCC, New Band, New Mode, New Slot, or Already Worked. Interesting spots are pushed directly to your FlexRadio panadapter so you can tune with a single click. FT8/FT4 decodes are enriched the same way in real time.

Written in Go (backend) and Svelte + TailwindCSS (frontend). No external dependencies at runtime — the web dashboard is embedded in the binary.

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What it does

Goal	How
Chase New DXCC	Every spot is cross-referenced against your logbook. New entities are highlighted in green.
Chase New Band / New Mode	Per-band and per-mode worked status computed from your log. Yellow = new band, orange = new mode, purple = new band+mode.
Chase New Slots	New Band+Mode combinations (slots) highlighted in light blue.
CAT control	OmniRig (any compatible transceiver: Kenwood, Yaesu, Icom, Elecraft…) or FlexRadio. Click a spot to tune the radio instantly.
FlexRadio integration	Spots pushed to the panadapter with color coding. Click a spot in the UI to tune the radio.
FTx monitoring	WSJT-X / JTDX / MSHV decodes enriched with log status badges in real time.
Chase Hamaward awards	Set a 3-letter award code — matching stations are auto-watched and prioritised in autocall.
Stay informed	Watchlist alerts, POTA/SOTA activations, DXpedition calendar, DX-World news, solar data.
Track your progress	ClubLog-style Logbook dashboard: per-band DXCC chart, newest entity worked, current QSO streak, longest path (30d), 365-day activity counter.
Use it anywhere	Responsive web UI — phone, tablet, desktop. Open http://<host>:8080 from any device on the network.

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First Run — Setup Wizard

On first launch (no config.yml found), a setup wizard opens automatically in the browser. No manual config editing needed.

The wizard collects:

• Your callsign and Maidenhead grid locator
• CAT control: OmniRig (rig 1 or 2) and/or FlexRadio IP (leave empty for auto-discovery)
• Logbook database path (Log4OM or Ham Radio Deluxe SQLite)
• DX cluster servers (pre-filled with F4BPO Cluster and POTA Cluster)

After completing the wizard, the application starts all services automatically and the dashboard loads.

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Features

DX Cluster

• Connect to multiple DX cluster servers simultaneously (DXSpider, CC-Cluster, AR-Cluster, GoCluster (N2WQ) — auto-detected or forced via config)
• Designate a master cluster for command routing; additional clusters are read-only spot sources
• Per-cluster filters: Skimmer, FT8, FT4, Beacon — automatically translated to the cluster's syntax (set/skimmer for DXSpider/CC, PASS SOURCE SKIMMER for GoCluster, etc.)
• Console tab with quick-command buttons per cluster type, including GoCluster's PASS DEZONE for regional (EU/NA/…) filtering
• Send custom login commands per cluster (e.g. SET/FILTER for geographic filtering)
• Automatic reconnection on disconnect
• Spot deduplication and configurable TTL (spot lifetime)
• Suffix-aware dedup: when the same operator is spotted both as bare call and with /P, /M, /MM, /AM, /QRP, /A on the same band, the more specific suffix variant wins — no more "OH8NW next to OH8NW/P" duplicates
• Indexed SQLite DB with WAL + tuned pragmas: handles flood-level skimmer traffic (300+ spots/sec from GoCluster + RBN) without backing up the pipeline
• Non-blocking TCP reader: each spot is processed in its own goroutine so the socket is never stalled

Spot Display & Filtering

• Real-time spot list: callsign, frequency, band, mode, DXCC country, spotter, time, comment
• Log status badges: New DXCC / New Band / New Mode / New Slot / Worked — resolved from in-memory logbook cache (refreshed every 30 seconds)
• LoTW indicator: marks spots from confirmed LoTW users (~150k users downloaded at startup)
• Color-coded spots — fully configurable in Settings:
  • New DXCC → green text
  • New Band → yellow text
  • New Mode → orange text
  • New Band+Mode → purple text
  • New Slot → light blue text
  • My callsign → red text
  • Already Worked → white on cyan background
• Filter by: type (New DXCC, New Band, New Mode, New Slot, Worked, Watchlist, POTA, SOTA), band (160M–70cm), mode (CW, SSB, FT8, FT4, FT2, RTTY)
• Bands supported: 160M, 80M, 60M, 40M, 30M, 20M, 17M, 15M, 12M, 10M, 6M, 2M, 70cm
• Web Worker-based filtering for smooth UI on large spot lists
• Sortable columns (callsign, country, mode, frequency)
• Smooth display: spot list refreshes at 500 ms cadence regardless of burst rate from the cluster

Logbook Integration & Dashboard

• Supports Log4OM 2 (SQLite or MySQL) and Ham Radio Deluxe (SQLite)
• In-memory cache: all contacts are loaded at startup into indexed maps and refreshed every 30 seconds — spot enrichment is O(1) with zero database I/O on the critical path
• Computes worked status for every spot: New DXCC, New Band, New Mode, New Band+Mode Slot, Worked
• ClubLog-style Logbook dashboard:
  • Counters: Today / This Week / This Month / 365 days / Total
  • Newest entity worked: most recent first-worked DXCC + date
  • Current QSO streak: consecutive UTC days with at least one QSO
  • Longest path (30d): greatest QSO distance over the last month (haversine from your Maidenhead grid to the worked DXCC's center)
  • DXCC Progress overall bar (worked + confirmed via LoTW/QSL)
  • DXCC progress by band: 160M → 6M with worked vs confirmed bars
  • Total slots progress bar: confirmed / worked across all visible bands
  • Recent QSOs: last 10 contacts
• Auto-refresh on QSO log: a freshly logged contact in Log4OM is detected within 30 s; matching panadapter spots are immediately re-painted with the Worked color and [Worked] tag so the operator sees the change without restarting anything
• DXCC name normalization: cty.plist regional labels that share an ADIF code with their parent (Sicily → Italy) are collapsed to the canonical name

CAT Control

Tune the radio with a single click on any spot. Two backends supported, OmniRig has priority when enabled:

• OmniRig (Windows) — works with any OmniRig-compatible transceiver (Kenwood, Yaesu, Icom, Elecraft…). Sets frequency and mode directly via COM. No need for Log4OM-as-CAT-bridge. OmniRig v2 mode constants are mapped correctly (CW_U at bit 23, DIG_U at bit 27, etc.).
• FlexRadio — direct SmartSDR TCP, sets slice frequency and mode, auto-zooms the panadapter and adjusts AGC per mode.

Selectable from Settings → CAT Control. Hot-reload: toggling enabled/rig restarts the OmniRig COM client without restarting the application.

FlexRadio Integration

• Auto-discovery via SmartSDR UDP broadcast or direct IP connection (local or remote)
• Pushes DX spots directly to the panadapter with callsign, frequency, color and comment
• Live frequency tracking: spots are filtered to the current active band automatically
• On spot click (panadapter) — DXHunter intercepts the trigger and:
  • Sends the callsign to Log4OM (UDP)
  • Switches the slice mode (CW / USB / LSB / DIGU / DIGL — DIGU/DIGL chosen by frequency for FT8/FT4/RTTY)
  • Re-tunes the slice exactly on the spot frequency (no audio offset artefacts when crossing mode families)
  • Adjusts panadapter bandwidth and slice AGC based on the spot's mode group
• Configurable spot-click behavior (Settings → FlexRadio → On spot click):
  • Toggle "Center panadapter on spot"
  • Per-mode-group bandwidth override: CW / SSB+AM+FM / Digital (FT8/FT4/RTTY/DIGU/…)
  • Per-mode-group AGC override: Off / Fast / Medium / Slow
• Auto-refresh of any panadapter spot when its QSO gets logged in Log4OM — color updates to Worked instantly
• Async spot writer: spot add/remove commands flow through a 2000-slot queue drained by a dedicated goroutine — the cluster pipeline never blocks on Flex's TCP receive, even during PASS SOURCE SKIMMER floods
• Fast disconnect detection: 5 s write deadline + 30 s TCP keep-alive → broken connections detected within ~1 min instead of 5
• Panadapter preserved on reconnect: transient TCP drops (Wi-Fi blip, keep-alive miss) no longer wipe your spot list — spot clear runs once on first connect, never on reconnects
• Race-orphan cleanup: when two clusters spot the same DX+band within milliseconds, the duplicate marker that previously stayed on the panadapter is now detected and removed automatically
• Spot lifecycle management: removes expired spots from the panadapter
• Automatic reconnection with indefinite retries

FTx Monitor — WSJT-X / JTDX / MSHV

• Listens on UDP multicast (default 239.255.0.1:2237) with SO_REUSEADDR — shares the port with WSJT-X, GridTracker, Log4OM simultaneously
• Decodes FT8, FT4 and FT2 messages in real time
• Decodes grouped by 15-second period with a clear visual separator
• Log status badges on each decode: New DXCC / New Band / New Mode / New Slot / Worked — enriched from in-memory logbook cache
• Country lookup from callsign (in-memory, instant)
• LoTW indicator on each decode
• Watchlist highlight: watched callsigns highlighted directly in the decode list
• Filters: CQ only, My Call only
• Autocall: click a decode to send a Reply command back to WSJT-X/MSHV — or let the engine pick the best candidate automatically (prioritises New DXCC > Band > Mode > Slot, then ClubLog Most Wanted rank, then SNR)
• ClubLog Most Wanted ranking is personalised to your QTH: the list is fetched using your configured callsign so rankings reflect what stations you need most, not a global average. A station with a higher Most Wanted rank wins the tiebreaker in autocall and its rank is shown as a badge (MW #N) in the autocall status bar
• Halt TX: cancel auto-sequence from the dashboard
• Countdown timer to next TX/RX period (15s FT8 / 7.5s FT4 / 3.25s FT2)
• Pause / Resume / Clear

Watchlist

• Track specific callsigns with optional notes
• Alerts (toast + optional push notification) when a watched station appears on the cluster
• Suffix-aware matching: an entry for RI0SP also matches RI0SP/MM, RI0SP/P, prefix-area calls like W1/F4XYZ, etc. — no more stale lastSeen when the operator is portable
• "Only active" filter: show only watchlist entries with a live spot
• "Only not worked" filter
• ON AIR badge based on the server-side lastSeen (not the spotter's UTC clock) so the indicator is accurate even when the cluster lags
• Per-callsign notification toggle
• Last seen timestamp per entry, refreshed every 15 s in the UI
• Spot count per callsign
• WWFF references (FFF-0188, DLFF-…) detected and treated as POTA — same color, priority and click behavior
• ClubLog enrichment (optional API key): expedition status, OQRS availability, live 24h QSO count, total QSOs
• 5-minute notification cooldown per callsign to avoid spam
• Contest mode integration: contest-prefixed callsigns auto-added; auto-cleanup when the prefix changes — old contest entries that don't match the new prefix are removed automatically
• Worked status on watchlist spots queried live from database (always current)

QRZ Callsign Lookup

• Look up any callsign directly from the dashboard
• Displays name, QTH, DXCC country, grid locator, license class and bio
• Distance and azimuth calculated from your grid locator to the station's grid
• ClubLog Most Wanted rank displayed for the looked-up station (personalised to your QTH)
• Requires a QRZ XML subscription (API key configured in Settings)

Greyline

• Interactive greyline map showing day/night terminator in real time
• Visualise propagation windows toward a target region
• Based on your configured grid locator

POTA / SOTA Enrichment

• Automatic detection of POTA references (AA-0036) and SOTA references (F/AB-123) in spot comments
• Fetches park name from pota.app API (SQLite cache, 30-day TTL)
• Fetches summit name from sota.org.uk API (SQLite cache)

DXpedition & News

• Activations tab: live ADXO DXpedition feed (ng3k.com, refreshed hourly) with bands, modes, QSL info
• DX-World tab: latest DX-World.net news articles refreshed automatically

Notifications

• Gotify push notifications: New DXCC, New Band, New Mode, New Band+Mode, Watchlist hit — each individually configurable
• Windows native toast notifications for watchlist hits (callsign, country, frequency, mode, spotter)
• Click a toast to tune FlexRadio directly to the spot frequency

Award Chasing Mode

Designed for chasing Hamaward awards. Each award on Hamaward is identified by a 3-letter code (e.g. SAC, WAE, EU). Set that code as the contest prefix and DXHunter will focus exclusively on eligible stations.

• Toggle award chasing on/off
• Set the 3-letter Hamaward award code as the contest prefix — only stations whose callsign matches that prefix are tracked
• Optionally add a list of specific callsigns to chase
• Matching stations are auto-added to the watchlist at startup
• Watchlist filtered to show only award-eligible stations during a chase session
• FTx autocall prioritises award stations when enabled

Web Dashboard

• Embedded Svelte SPA served at http://localhost:8080
• Real-time WebSocket connection for live updates (spots, FTx decodes, band changes, stats)
• 12 themes selectable from Settings: Dark, Midnight, Dracula, Solarized Dark, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox, Catppuccin Mocha, One Dark, Nord, Cyberpunk, Sepia, Light. Theme is persisted per-browser (localStorage).
• Stats bar: total spots received / processed / success rate / New DXCCs / connected clients / total QSOs / active filters
• Solar data: SFI, Sunspot number, A-index, K-index
• Main tabs: Recent Spots, FTx Decodes, DX-World
• Sidebar tabs: DXpedition, DX-World, Watchlist, Logbook, Propagation, Console, App Logs
• Console tab: real-time cluster message feed + send commands to the master cluster, with quick-command buttons per cluster type (DXSpider, CC, AR, GoCluster)
• App Logs tab: live application log viewer (INFO / WARN / ERROR filter)
• Settings UI: edit all configuration from the browser — General, CAT Control (OmniRig + FlexRadio), FlexRadio spot-click behavior, Database/Logbook, FTx, QRZ, ClubLog API key, Spot Colors (with color picker), Telnet server, Gotify, Clusters. No manual config.yml editing needed.
• Mobile / tablet responsive: layout stacks vertically below 1024 px, StatsCards adapts 2→3→4→6→7 columns, sidebar tabs collapse to icons on phones, page scroll unlocked below lg so all panels are reachable on a single column
• Update check: polls Gitea/GitHub releases every 10 minutes (toggleable in Settings → General → "Check for new version")

Telnet Server

• Built-in Telnet server (default 0.0.0.0:7300) — connect Log4OM or any DX software to receive spots
• Re-broadcasts all incoming cluster spots to connected Telnet clients in standard DX format
• Routes commands from Telnet clients to the master cluster

Performance & Reliability

• Indexed spots DB: covering indexes on (dx, band), flexSpotNumber and timestamp — every hot-path lookup (dedup, suffix-variant check, click resolution, cleanup) is O(log n)
• SQLite WAL + tuned pragmas (synchronous=NORMAL, temp_store=MEMORY, busy_timeout=5000) for sustained burst writes
• Bounded async queues: 5000-slot spot ingest, 2000-slot Flex writer — saturated Flex never freezes the cluster pipeline
• TCP keep-alive 30 s on Flex socket → dead links detected in ~1 min instead of 5
• WebSocket concurrent-write panic fixed: handler replies now flow through the per-client send channel; the write pump remains the sole writer on each socket
• Panic-to-log on Windows GUI mode: stderr is redirected to dxhunter.log when Log to file is enabled so runtime panics are captured instead of vanishing

Other

• LoTW user list: downloaded at startup, used to mark spots and decodes from LoTW-active stations
• ClubLog API: expedition and OQRS detection for watchlist entries
• Hot-reload config: edit config.yml while running — log level, cluster filters and FlexRadio spot-click settings apply immediately
• DXCC data: cty.plist loaded at startup, auto-updated in background
• Configurable log level: DEBUG / INFO / WARN
• Optional log to file

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Requirements

Requirement	Notes
Log4OM 2 or Ham Radio Deluxe	Required for spot enrichment. Provides the contact database (SQLite or MySQL).
FlexRadio + SmartSDR	Optional. Required for panadapter spot display.
OmniRig (Windows)	Optional. Provides CAT control to any compatible transceiver — alternative to FlexRadio for non-Flex users.
WSJT-X / JTDX / MSHV	Optional. Required for FTx decode monitoring.
Windows	Primary platform (Windows toast notifications, multicast, OmniRig COM).

Without a logbook, the following features are unavailable: New DXCC / Band / Mode / Slot detection, Worked status, FTx log badges, QSO stats, DXCC progress.

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Setup

First run

Just launch DXHunter.exe. If no config.yml is found, the setup wizard opens at http://localhost:8080. Fill in your details and click Save & Start. Done.

Manual configuration

If you prefer to edit config.yml directly:

general:
  callsign: "F4BPO"
  grid: "JN03"
  flexradiospot: true
  telnetserver: true
  delete_log_file_at_start: true
  log_level: INFO

database:
  sqlite: true
  logbook_type: "log4om"   # "log4om" or "hrd"

sqlite:
  sqlite_path: 'C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\Log4OM2\Data\log4om.db'

clusters:
  - name: "F4BPO Cluster"
    server: "cluster.f4bpo.com"
    port: "7300"
    login: "F4BPO"
    login_prompt: "login:"
    skimmer: true
    ft8: true
    enabled: true
    master: true

  - name: "POTA Cluster"
    server: "pota-cluster.iz2lsc.eu"
    port: "7373"
    login: "F4BPO"
    login_prompt: "login:"
    enabled: true
    master: false

flex:
  discover: true             # true = auto-discover on LAN
  ip: ""                     # or set a fixed IP

omnirig:
  enabled: false             # set true to use OmniRig for CAT instead of FlexRadio
  rig: 1                     # OmniRig rig number (1 or 2)

telnetserver:
  host: "0.0.0.0"
  port: "7300"

Log4OM setup

1. Log4OM → Network → DX Cluster → server: localhost:7300
2. Log4OM → Database → note the SQLite path and set it in sqlite_path
3. Optionally enable UDP Callsign in Log4OM to receive clicked callsigns from DXHunter

OmniRig setup

1. Install OmniRig (free, Windows-only)
2. Open OmniRig and configure Rig 1 (or Rig 2) with your transceiver type, COM port and baud rate
3. Verify OmniRig shows status "Online" — DXHunter connects via COM (CoCreateInstance), same mechanism as WSJT-X
4. In DXHunter: Settings → CAT Control → OmniRig → Enabled + select Rig 1 or 2

Ham Radio Deluxe setup

1. Set logbook_type: "hrd" in config.yml
2. Set sqlite_path to your HRD SQLite database file

WSJT-X / MSHV / JTDX setup

• UDP Server address: 239.255.0.1 (multicast) or 127.0.0.1 (unicast)
• Port: 2237
• Enable Accept UDP requests

DXHunter shares the UDP port with other apps already listening on 2237.

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Running

DXHunter.exe
# or with explicit config path:
DXHunter.exe --config C:\path\to\config.yml

Open http://localhost:8080 in a browser (or any browser on the network).

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Architecture

DX Cluster servers ──TCP──► TCPClient.go (DXSpider / CC / AR / GoCluster,
                                          per-cluster filter dialect, async)
WSJT-X / MSHV ─────UDP──► ftx.go
FlexRadio SmartSDR ─TCP──► flexradio.go (async writer goroutine + queue,
                                          5s write deadline, 30s keep-alive)
Transceiver ────CAT──► omnirig_windows.go (COM, STA worker)
Log4OM / HRD DB ───────► database.go ──► logbookcache.go (in-memory, 30s
                                          refresh, per-band stats, newest
                                          entity, streak, longest-path 30d,
                                          last-365-day count, fires
                                          OnNewlyWorked → repaint panadapter)

                    ┌──────────────────────┐
                    │  Go backend          │
                    │  spotprocessor.go    │  dedup (DX+band + /P suffix), TTL, color, click→Worked refresh
                    │  httpserver.go       │  HTTP + WebSocket (500ms spot tick, 15s watchlist tick)
                    │  watchlist.go        │  watchlist engine (prefix-match, suffix-aware)
                    │  pota.go             │  POTA/SOTA cache (WWFF treated as POTA)
                    │  dxcc.go             │  DXCC lookup (cty.plist, Sicily→Italy normalization)
                    │  grid.go             │  Maidenhead grid + haversine (longest-path widget)
                    │  lotw.go             │  LoTW user list
                    │  setup.go            │  first-run wizard
                    │  releasecheck.go     │  update check (10 min)
                    └──────────┬───────────┘
                               │ WebSocket
                    ┌──────────▼───────────┐
                    │  Svelte frontend     │
                    │  (embedded, :8080)   │  responsive: phone / tablet / desktop
                    └──────────────────────┘
                               │ Telnet
                    Log4OM ────┘  (:7300)

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License

Personal / amateur radio use.