Starting loads the interactive globe and begins streaming live data — flights, ships, weather, satellites, internet events and more — to your browser.
_ga). Ads, where shown, are non-personalised and kept separate from the data; our ad provider may set its own cookies. No cross-site trackers, no data sales.Live on the globe now: 2,500 tracked
This layer draws live amateur radio propagation on the globe. Every arc is a single reception report: one station transmitted, another station somewhere in the world decoded it, and the path between them is drawn from the two operators' Maidenhead grid squares. Arcs are coloured by band, running warm to cool the way hams already think about the spectrum — 160m and 80m in reds and oranges, 40m and 30m in yellows, 20m and 17m in greens and teals, 15m and 12m in blues, and the higher bands in violet and pink. The result is a live picture of which parts of the ionosphere are open to where. Watch 20m light up across the Atlantic through the afternoon, then fade as 40m and 80m take over after dark; watch grey-line paths appear along the terminator at sunrise and sunset. Most of what you see is FT8, the weak-signal digital mode that now dominates HF activity, alongside FT4, WSPR, JS8 and CW. The data comes from PSK Reporter, the reception-report network that thousands of operators feed automatically from WSJT-X and similar software, redistributed as a live MQTT stream by Tom Sevart (M0LTE). The globe shows the most recent few thousand paths and refreshes every 15 seconds, so what you are looking at is the last few moments of worldwide radio propagation, not a historical map. Click any arc to see the two callsigns, the band and mode, the signal report in dB, and the great-circle distance the signal actually travelled.
Data source: PSK Reporter
From PSK Reporter, the automatic reception-reporting network that thousands of amateur radio operators feed from WSJT-X, JTDX and similar decoding software. Each time their radio decodes a signal it reports what it heard. This globe consumes the live MQTT redistribution of that stream operated by Tom Sevart, M0LTE.
One station heard another. The arc runs from the transmitting station to the receiving station, positioned by the Maidenhead grid square each operator publishes. It is a record of propagation — proof that a signal made that journey — not a voice conversation or a scheduled contact.
FT8 is a weak-signal digital mode that decodes signals well below the noise floor and runs on a fixed 15-second cycle, so stations make far more reportable contacts per hour than voice or CW. It now accounts for the large majority of reception reports worldwide, which is why it dominates this layer.
HF propagation depends on the ionosphere, which is shaped by sunlight. Higher bands like 20m, 17m and 15m open over daylight paths and close after dark; lower bands like 40m, 80m and 160m come alive at night. Watching the colours shift across the globe over a day is watching the ionosphere change.
Only if one of your transmissions happened to be reported in the last few minutes — the globe holds a live window of the most recent paths, not a searchable archive. For a full history of where a specific callsign has been heard, query PSK Reporter directly at pskreporter.info.
Live amateur-radio contacts — each arc is one station hearing another
Discuss this feed with other watchers on the community discussion.
Comments0