DXHeat Website

Occasionally, something new and useful comes along on the internet for HAMs. I believe that DXHeat.com is a recent example of this. DXHeat.com has been put together by Tobias Wellnitz, DH1TW. DXHeat.com takes an innovative, analytics-based approach to DX Cluster search and data display. Big Data Analytics is certainly a key future technology for internet and other applications and Tobias has created an interesting application of this technology for HAM Spotting Cluster data access.

Cluster Spot Analytics

To give you an idea of how this works, I entered by callsign (AB1OC) into DXHeat.com’s cluster search engine. The graphic above is a snapshot of the result. As you can see, the site not only produces a list of the spots of my callsign but it also created graphical views showing the bands, dates and times where I was spotted as well as the source (continents) where the spots were originated. This information gives me a better picture of where I am being heard on various bands for example.

Online SDR

DXHeat.com also includes a link to an online WebSDR which can be used to listen to stations from inside Europe on the HAM bands. It looks like Tobias plans to link his site to the WebSDR so that one can listen to a spotted station as well as tune the bands and create new spots.

Tobias’ site is relatively new and there is a great deal of potential for enhancements to his concept. For example, one can imagine that automated phone spotting might be possible using  voice recognition technology sometime in the future. It will be interesting to watch how DXHeat.com evolves. Thanks to John, W1MBG to pointing out DXHeat.com to us.

– Fred (AB1OC)