6 APPs must-have for Amateur radios

Lewis Ringway M3HHY who took a short video to show us 6 APPs that can use on our smartphone that are related to amateur radio, these APPs will you show you information that you need for the foundation intermediate and a full license for amateur radios in UK and America as well and sorts of countries and there are loads of apps out there but he just wanted to show us sort of the six most people like and use the most. These are available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App store supported by different phones.

1. QRZ Assistant

Many of us watching this should be familiar with QRZ.COM, it is the amateur radio callsign lookup and it basically has callsigns from all over the world and this is the APP goes with it, it's quite handy if you want to send QSL card if you want to see where somebody is, you can search his callsign. People have their addresses on for sending out qsl cards and stuff like email, hobbies. It gives your Grid Square and how many views you. 

The QRZ has a quite handy feature to have if you were out on the radio and you want to look somebody. you can type in a name of a town and it will show you who's near you, so you can see what other amateur radio operators are in the local area and it's just good for listening out for people, you know to listen out of callsigns on VHF UHF and in your local area and it's good to make contact, so yeah that's the QRZ app Lewis highly recommend.

2. EchoLink  

This app is for licensed Amateur Radio operators only. 

This is the free app and this basically allows you to talk all around the world over VoIP and IR IP so you can basically talk to amateur radio operators through echo link not on RF. You can link into repeaters that are linked to RF systems so you can use this to talk across the world on our repeaters. Now you do need a license to use this them you do have to provide proof of your license to echo link to be allowed onto the system. if I click on repeaters there I saw its locations, you can see all the locations around the world and if I click on repeaters you can see all the echo link repeaters that are around. You can connect into these repeaters and you can talk over them so if you don't have a radio handy, you can just talk from your smartphone and these work on network radios as well which is good. if you cant get on the radio or you haven’t got a radio handy. You can just click on these call signs and you can talk to people. 

3. SSTV Encoder 

What you can do in this APP.  You can load up a picture, you can take a picture, you can edit pictures or you can add text to pictures.
take a picture, click on use photo and then click on transmit image and then you can see that’s actually sending that out there and you can hear the sound on the screen.  And that’s sending that picture out as a data mode, you can plug your radio into your phone and send the audio straight into radio and but basically, another person would have their smartphone and radio next to each other and they would receive that and they would basically be able to download the picture that you’re sending so it sends out as data and you receive it so it’s quite a simple handy app and it’s great fun.

4. Repeaterbook 

It displays repeaters from all over the world you cant talk into them from this. This is basically a directory and you can go through, you can look at a list of repeaters and it’ll give you all the information you need. So the input frequency the output frequency CTCSS offset, all that sort of stuff the location. How far away it is from you. It’ll give you all the information and you can just program it into your radio and get going on a repeater. So if you’re away from home. You’ve got your handheld with you or something you want to get on a local repeater. You can find your local repeater and get straight into it and it lists them by name and by distance. You can find repeaters all over the place no matter where you are. It will tell you which repeaters are close to you which is good for range tesing. 

5. Scanner Feed 

This mainly covers things like you see Chicago Police there which you can listen to, it’s like five hundred and forty-three people online and that’s basically like the Police Public Safety feed and you can listen to Police Fire Ambulance. You can see there are loads there to be going mainly in American but from time to time, you do get British scanner feeds in there. 
You can get scanner feeds from the Uk for like PMR, amateur radio stuff things like that. So there’s always loads of things to listen to on there. But if you want to listen to police fire and ambulance and emergency services in American and Air traffic control and this the app for you. You cant listen to UK air traffic controllers, it is illegal to rebroadcast that. 

6. Zello

Turn your phone or tablet into a walkie talkie with this lightning fast free PTT (Push-To-Talk) radio app. Talk to your contacts privately or join public channels to engage in a hot debate.

This is a VoIP network and basically you can talk to individuals you can set up groups but the good thing about this, firstly you’ve got all the network radios channels on there now which you’re attracting loads of users and you’ve also got our ref linked repeaters, so there are tons of tons of people on there, it’s a PTT based app so network radio devices you can use, but it’s not amateur radio and but it is linked to some amateur radio systems.