Over the last few months, several applications have been released through the Apple iPhone Applications store for Amateur Radio operators. Due to the number of applications that are available on the market, We wanted to provide a list for a few of the applications that we feel other hams may find interesting or useful.
Freq Finder - The only iPhone Repeater Directory that searches by distance from your current location!
This app is rather costly compared to other apps in the store, but the functionality and the features of this app make it well worth the money. This app was designed to be a true mobile repeater directory, with the ability to search for repeaters across multiple ham bands. The creator of this app has done an outstanding job at keeping the records up to date with not only the locations, but PL tones, distances, repeater call-signs, and estimated signal strengths.
Website: http://coolhamstuff.com/freqfinder.html
iBCNU - IBCNU is the first amateur radio application that has turned the iPhone it into an APRS tracker and message terminal.
This app does an outstanding job when it comes to position reporting via APRS. Using the iPhones 3g / mobile internet connection IBCNU transmits your location directly to the internet where it can be viewed in some of the most common tracker sites (example: http://www.aprs.fi). This app is reasonably priced at $1.99 on the app store. This app comes with several features for customizations, including beacon delays, logs, and mapping. The downside is that since you aren’t using 144.390 or some other APRS frequency, you won’t show up on the displays of stations that use ham frequencies for APRS.
Website: http://ibcnu.us/
iPTT - iPTT is a simple but powerful push-to-talk app designed for the iPhone.
Most people wouldn't think that a walk-talkie type application would have much to do with Ham radio. Well as it turns out a few hams have gotten together and are working to help set an example to the rest of the world on how amateur radio operators are truly professionals when it comes to communications. If you "tune" this app to 07.3 you will notice you will have entered a dedicated channel called Ham Radio. Even though anyone (with or without a call-sign) can join in, this app is showing to be a great way to communicate with other hams in a new founded fashion. This app also gives the ability to communicate with non-hams and provides them with the opportunity to interact with ham radio operators. We must fore-warn you though, this application / user chat is not monitored. In our experiments, we ran in to a few users that were using some rather colorful wording. Please be advised this app is not recommended for users under the age of 18.
Website: http://www.circleapps.com
Below is a short list of apps that were recommended by other ham operators. We personally have not tested these apps ourselves, so we are unable to provide first hand knowledge of these applications. Feel free to search for them on the iphone store and let us know what you think. If its good, we will add it to the above list.
GoSatWatch – satellite tracking
LineCalc – coax loss and impedance transform calculations.
RF Calc – path loss calculations and dBm conversions.
If you know of an app that relates to ham radio in the Apple store and you feel that its worth its weight in gold. By all means let us know and we will add it to our list.
(This page wasn't created to promote any specific application, the information above is based soley on our personal experiences and research.)