Powerful and reliable FT8 remote control
FT8 Hero is the easy way to run your FT8 station from your phone, and it is built to be trusted with it. Install one app beside WSJT-X or JTDX, scan a code, and you are done: the band, the decodes, the waterfall, calling CQ, answering, changing band and logging — all on your phone, from the sofa, the beach or the other side of the world. The rig never moves and nothing is opened on your router.
Free download · macOS and Windows · WSJT-X and JTDX
Everything you would do at the desk, done from wherever you are. No remote desktop, no VPN, no walking back to the shack to change band. Powerful enough to run the whole QSO from your phone, reliable enough to leave the rig alone for the evening.
Every decode as it lands, with signal report, offset and time. Green is a CQ you can answer, orange is somebody calling you. A fifteen-minute activity map shows where the band is busy, and the live waterfall is one tap away.
Tap a CQ to answer it, or tap CALL CQ and let them come to you. FT8 Hero presses your program’s own buttons on the shack computer, so the station behaves exactly as it would with your hand on the mouse.
10 m gone quiet? Switch to 20 from your seat. FT8 Hero moves the band selector for you and checks the dial actually moved before it says so.
The Log QSO box is confirmed for you the moment a contact completes, and it goes straight to QSL World and QRZ Logbook — with propagation and weather in the comment. Nothing to type in later.
Most ways of running a shack from a phone put a picture of your computer’s screen on it. FT8 Hero does something different, and it is the difference you feel.
The radio is driven by WSJT-X, exactly as it is today. FT8 Hero is the first tool that gives the operator the controls without giving them the screen — simpler, lighter, and made for the phone in your hand.
Five tabs, no menus to hunt through. Every button tells you what it is doing, and the one that stops the transmitter is always the largest thing on the screen. Add it to your home screen and it opens full screen, like any other app.
The activity map above, the decodes below. Green is a CQ you can answer, orange is a station calling you. Tap the frequency to change band.
All six standard messages, Monitor, Decode, Tune and Clear — plus who you are working, your report, and what is queued to go out next.
Every contact of the session, with a badge each for QSL World and QRZ so you can see a submission succeed — or fail — rather than assume it.
How it works, what happens when nobody is watching, and which version you are running — on the screen, not in a manual.
Tap Waterfall and you see what the shack sees: a live picture of the Wide Graph itself, carriers, birdies, QRM and all. On Windows nothing needs granting; on a Mac it asks once for Screen Recording.
It only runs while you are looking. Switch away, lock your phone or put the app in the background and the shack stops sending within seconds. Roughly 0.4 MB a minute while you watch, nothing when you don’t.
Want to spend no data at all? The activity map is drawn from the decodes that were arriving anyway, and costs nothing extra.
Five minutes, once. The app walks you through every step on its first run.
Download it free and install it on the computer that runs WSJT-X or JTDX. It sits beside your decoder and does not replace it: your program keeps decoding and talking to the radio exactly as it does now.
In WSJT-X or JTDX open Settings → Reporting, set the UDP server to 127.0.0.1 on port 2237 and tick Accept UDP requests. That is the whole configuration. The app’s Diagnostics tab shows every connection turning green.
On a Mac, allow Accessibility and Automation when asked: that is how FT8 Hero arms the transmitter and changes band with no extra rig setup. On Windows there is nothing to grant; just allow it through the firewall if Windows asks.
Open the Pair tab and point your phone at the QR code. That link is your station. Put it on your home screen and it opens full screen, like an app. No account, no password, nothing to install on the phone.
Start a film and work the band from the sofa. Take the dog out and answer a CQ on the walk. Sit on the beach and let the station call for you. Wait at the airport, the dentist or the school gate with 20 m open in your hand. Tap a CQ to work it, CALL CQ to start calling, STOP TX to end it, and every contact logs itself before you have put the phone down.
FT8 Hero listens on the same UDP protocol WSJT-X defined, so it recognises your program from its own packets. There is nothing to choose and nothing to configure.
Everything: answering, calling CQ, arming and stopping the transmitter, changing band without CAT, confirming the log box, and the waterfall. Operated on the air.
The same controls, driven through JTDX’s own window rather than a lookalike of WSJT-X’s. Its controls, band selector and message boxes are read and operated directly.
Decodes, station status and logging all arrive over the shared protocol and work today. The buttons do not: MSHV’s window has not been measured the way WSJT-X’s and JTDX’s have, and FT8 Hero will not click at a guess next to a transmitter.
Everything your station puts on the air is your responsibility, and FT8 Hero is written on that basis. Reliable means more than staying connected: it means the transmitter never runs without you. These are not settings buried in a menu — they are how it behaves.
If your phone loses signal, your battery dies, or you simply close the page, the agent halts the transmission and switches WSJT-X off. It will not sit there keying every fifteen seconds into an empty room. You choose how long it waits.
Only two actions put you on the air, and both say so: calling CQ, and tapping a station to work it. Nothing else — not the waterfall, not the activity map, not tapping a dot on the graph. Stopping is one large red button, always on screen.
Each installation issues itself a private 256-bit key on first run. It is stored hashed on the relay, never in plain text, and compared in constant time. No accounts, no shared passwords, nothing of yours sitting in a database.
The shack computer dials out and collects whatever you have tapped in the same request. There is no port forwarding, no inbound connection, and nothing of yours listening on the open internet.
No frame is captured or sent unless the waterfall is on your screen. Look away and it stops within seconds — no background streaming, no data spent on a picture nobody is watching.
Anyone holding your pairing link can key your transmitter, and the app tells you so plainly. If it ever gets out — a screenshot, a shared phone — one tap issues a new key and the old link stops working immediately.
Powerful and reliable FT8 remote control, free to download. Install it on the computer that runs WSJT-X or JTDX — there is nothing to install on your phone.
Free download Read the setup guideWindows 10 or later · macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel · Linux · Works with WSJT-X 2.x and 3.0, and JTDX
Rather let the station work the band by itself while you watch it from here? Hamilton Auto FT8, from the same author, makes the contacts on its own and runs beside FT8 Hero on the same computer.
The ones worth answering before you install anything.
Q: Is this screen sharing or a remote desktop?
A: No. Screen sharing sends a video of your computer to the phone and makes you tap WSJT-X’s tiny buttons in it. FT8 Hero is a small program beside WSJT-X that reads what it reports and presses its buttons for you, and your phone gets a page designed for a phone. No video, a few kilobytes per update, nothing opened on your router, and the computer can stay locked. It is the first tool of its kind for FT8.
Q: Does it replace WSJT-X?
A: No. WSJT-X keeps doing everything it does now — decoding, sequencing, talking to your radio. FT8 Hero sits beside it, reads what it reports and presses its buttons for you. Your settings, your log, your setup, untouched.
Q: I run JTDX, not WSJT-X.
A: Then it runs JTDX. FT8 Hero works out which program your shack is running from the packets that program sends, and drives JTDX through its own window rather than assuming it looks like WSJT-X inside — which it does not. There is nothing to set. MSHV is recognised too, and everything it reports is shown, but its buttons are not pressed until its window has been measured.
Q: Do I need CAT control?
A: Not for anything except band changing. Watching the band, answering stations, calling CQ and logging all work without it. Changing band moves the radio only if WSJT-X already has rig control — exactly as it would if you clicked it yourself — and the app says so before you do it.
Q: Does it cost me data?
A: Very little. Watching the band and working stations is a few kilobytes at a time. The live waterfall is the only expensive part, about 0.4 MB a minute, and only while it is on your screen.
Q: Is it legal to operate remotely?
A: In most countries, yes, provided you remain the control operator and can stop the transmission at any time — which is what the halt and the unattended timeout exist for. Your licence conditions are yours to check; FT8 Hero is built to keep you able to comply.
Q: What if my phone dies mid-QSO?
A: The station stops. With nothing watching it — no phone, no browser, no command — the agent halts the transmission and disarms WSJT-X rather than leaving a rig transmitting unattended.
Q: Do I need an account?
A: No. Download it, install it, scan the code. Your copy issues itself a private key the first time it runs; there is nothing to sign up for and no password to forget. An account is optional: with one, you can open your station from any phone by signing in.
Q: Does it work on Windows?
A: Yes — the same app, driving WSJT-X through its own window, with the same phone page, in 64-bit and 32-bit builds. The installer is signed, so Windows installs it without a warning.
Q: Does it work with WSJT-X 3.0?
A: Yes, 3.0 included — the buttons FT8 Hero presses are the same. One thing to know: if you let the WSJT-X installer start WSJT-X for you when it finishes, WSJT-X runs with the installer’s administrator rights, and Windows then keeps any normal program, FT8 Hero among them, from pressing its buttons. FT8 Hero says so on the screen when it happens. Close WSJT-X and start it again from the Start menu, and everything works.
Q: Is it hard to set up?
A: No. One app on the shack computer, one setting in WSJT-X, one scan with the phone. The app walks you through it on its first run, and its Diagnostics tab shows each connection and what to change if one is red. Most people are on the air from the phone within five minutes.
Q: Where do my contacts go?
A: Into your WSJT-X log as always, and — if you want — straight to QSL World and to QRZ Logbook with your own API key. You can turn either off. Every submission shows you whether it actually succeeded.