Step 1
Listen
Before transmitting, every radio amateur starts by listening. Here you can hear stations from all over the world and radio amateurs live, and learn to recognise each sound.
Step 1 · Listen
Stations from around the world on a map
Before transmitting, every radio amateur starts by listening. Here you have thousands of real stations: tap a dot on the map and it plays.
The dark area is where it's night right now. Along the grey line, the border between day and night, shortwave travels especially far. It updates live.
Data from the free Radio Browser directory. These are internet broadcast stations: the first step to catching the bug. The real radio-amateur stuff comes right after, in “Open receivers, live”.
Step 2 · Hear real radio amateurs
Open receivers, live
There are receivers connected to big antennas that anyone can control from their browser. Nothing to install, no licence needed. Try the 40-metre band in the late afternoon or evening: you'll hear people chatting from half of Europe.
Or try something else:
Slow or not loading? Try another receiver:
- A real receiver in the Netherlands opens, already on the right frequency.
- If you can't hear anything, click anywhere on the page: the browser won't play audio until you touch something.
- Click on the waterfall (the coloured strip) near the bright lines: each one is someone transmitting.
University of Twente WebSDR
A receiver in the Netherlands that covers the whole of shortwave at once. Click on the waterfall and listen. Plenty of people got hooked here.
Open → All over the worldKiwiSDR receiver map
Hundreds of receivers spread across the planet. Pick one in Australia or Canada and listen to what can be heard there.
Open → See instead of hearPSK Reporter
A live map of who is receiving whom on digital modes. You can literally watch a band “open up”.
Open → From spaceRadio on the Space Station
The ISS carries an amateur radio station. Schools arrange contacts with the astronauts, and you can listen in from home.
Open →Live
On the air now
When one radio amateur hears another, they often post it online: it's called a spot, a heads-up. Together they make a living map of who is talking to whom all over the world, right now. Each line is a signal that has crossed countries or oceans.
Loading spots…
Learn to recognise them
What's that sound?
When you first listen to the radio, it all sounds like beeps and noise. Each sound has its own shape on the waterfall, the coloured graph on receivers. Tap one: you'll hear it and see how it's drawn.
Time falls downwards and pitch goes from low (left) to high (right). Just like on a real receiver.
The sounds are generated in your browser, imitating the real ones. Afterwards, look for them on a real receiver with the button that appears here.
And this is how they really sound
The sounds above are clean imitations. On the air there's noise, fading and voices talking over each other. These are real, freely licensed recordings: listen and compare. While they play, they are drawn on the waterfall above.