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Radiograms
NumberNr 4
Station of origin Jared K0TFU
Date filed

Plans and Blasts

Two new features last week, and a few polish items.

Share your plans for a future op

You can start an op anytime you want. Now if you want to share your plans with others in advance, you can post them on the website and in Discord with a single APRS message. Send PLAN with a future time and anything else you want chasers to know:

K7ABC-6OTAPLAN 2026-08-12T18:30Z lake op, HT and a signal stick
OTAK7ABC-6Op planned for 12 Aug 2026 18:30Z. aprsota.org/plans

QRX, the Q-code for “I will call you again at”, does the same thing.

An accepted plan is posted in five places: the new plans page, your callsign page, the Coming up section of the home page, the same section on /now, and the project Discord, which now has a channel just for planned ops.

The handbook page on how to plan an op covers when to use it, and the PLAN reference page has all the particulars about how to specify the time.

Talk to everybody on the op at once

A QSO that’s part of an op connects a single chaser with the host. But maybe you want to have your op work more like a net, where you can send a message to everyone who has participated. Hosts and chasers can now send a BLAST, and the bot fans out your message to every other participant in the op.

If you are hosting, send BLAST and your message from the station running your op. You are running exactly one op, so the bot already knows which one you mean:

K7ABC-6OTABLAST moving to the north summit
OTAK7ABC-6Blast sent to 3 stations.
OTAW1XYZ-5BLAST K7ABC-6: moving to the north summit
OTAKI7YAK-5BLAST K7ABC-6: moving to the north summit
OTAW1QRS-5BLAST K7ABC-6: moving to the north summit

If you are chasing, name the host with an @, the same way you called them in the first place. QST, the traditional signal for a message addressed to all amateurs, works in place of BLAST either way.

Smaller things

  • A clock. /now shows a ticking digital clock in Zulu and your own local time.
  • Live ops say when they end. An op that is on the air now shows its deadline next to the countdown, in Zulu with your local time beside it.
  • Discord. Alongside the planned ops channel, ops now post when they go on the air and again when they end.
  • The logbook. The op page logbook is easier to read and looks a bit nicer.
  • The handbook. There is a Bot commands section of its own now, one page per command, in alphabetical order.

I think the rough edges on this new service are getting cleaned up, we are close to the database reset and an official launch.