OnAir 0.2.9 brings digital voice for the amateur and public-safety modes (through codecs you install yourself), monitoring of many ham bands at once, a propagation map, a much better spectrum and tuning feel, many fixes from your reports, and a lot of new features. Most new features have only been tested on generated signals; the ones that need real hardware are listed under known limits.
Voice (you install the codec, OnAir never ships it)
- DMR, NXDN, dPMR, D-STAR, P25 phase 1, Yaesu System Fusion and TETRA play voice once you put the matching plug-in in the codecs folder (
onair-codec-ambe2,-ambe,-imbe,-ysf,-tetra). A new Voice codecs page in the Help menu shows what is loaded, and each panel has an install helper (open folder, build steps, rescan). Encrypted calls are never decoded. - DMR has a "Listen to" choice (first heard, slot 1, slot 2). In the multi-carrier views the best locked carrier now plays by itself, and the volume slider reaches every carrier.
- Voice codec notice: it is asked for in the panel itself, not hidden in a collapsed section.
Spectrum and tuning
- High-definition spectrum: finer FFT (up to 32768 bins), a soft white trace and a grey peak-hold line, trace thickness and FFT settings, slower waterfall speeds (down to 0.1 rows a second).
- Drag the spectrum sideways to scroll it; past the edge the radio retunes. Two buttons next to the spectrum choose centre tuning (a click centres the spectrum) or normal tuning (a click only moves the tuned box).
- The zoom is kept when you change frequency (#238). Click-to-tune is right in modes with a tune offset (AM stereo, #244).
- Map colours: presets (dark, light, classic, muted grey, satellite-ish) and your own colours for the maps (Ham, ADS-B, AIS, fullscreen).
- Floating windows remember their position and size per mode (View > Reset layout).
Ham
- Ham view with RX / TX / Ham selector: QSO engine for FT8, FT4, FT2, JT65, JT9 and JT4, WSPR beacon, and keyboard modes (PSK31/63, RTTY, CW, Olivia, Contestia, MFSK, THOR, DominoEX, Hell). Transmitting always needs the Arm button, your licence confirmation and the band-plan check.
- ADIF logging; opt-in upload to QRZ Logbook, Club Log and eQSL (off by default).
- Monitor bands: pick bands from 160 m to 6 m and decode FT8, FT4, FT2 and WSPR on all of them at once on a wide enough radio, in one list with band and dial columns, with a "cover the most selected" helper and a CPU guard. Even an RTL-SDR V4 can decode several modes in one band together.
- JT4 verified on a real recording; JT65 B/C now decode strong signals; MFSK decodes the first characters.
New and improved modes
- Tools > Propagation: coverage map from a transmitter marker (power, frequency, bandwidth, time, required SNR) with VHF/UHF line-of-sight and an HF skywave estimate. No terrain; HF is an estimate.
- Second-generation Cospas-Sarsat beacons (406 MHz, T.018); the first-generation decoder takes the whole 100 kHz passband and gives fewer false decodes (#223, checked with the reporter's recordings).
- DAB: the transmitter list now fills from the transmitter IDs even without a site database, keeps every transmitter heard in a band scan, and the fullscreen map uses the full height (#249). Site positions come from the ensemble itself, your own list or the shared list; there is no free list for Germany yet.
- Analogue TV: the picture now locks and decodes at much weaker signals (about 7 to 9 dB better lock, usable picture down to about 6 to 8 dB C/N).
- KAAL: lock and first audio about twice as fast.
- Hellschreiber Unicode (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek) with inverted and dual-line views (#225); JT4; Iridium raw lines can be copied live over UDP or TCP for iridium-toolkit (#240).
- ADS-B and AIS: feed targets for ADS-B Exchange, Flightradar24, FlightAware (via your own client) and AISHub, AIS Dispatcher, VesselFinder, VesselTracker (all off by default, your own keys). Aircraft details on the fullscreen map (#235).
- DRM: xHE-AAC through a libfdk-aac you install yourself (#247, untested on a real signal).
- KrakenSDR / KerberosSDR: coherent group with noise-source calibration and the MUSIC direction finder (tested on simulated arrays only).
- TCI network radio (ExpertSDR3 and compatible), receive only (#248).
- Radios: per-gain-stage settings for SoapySDR radios, a "SoapySDR (device string)" network radio, SDRplay duplicate entries hidden with a "Hide radio" option, DVB gain optimiser fixes, Cospas at 128 kHz, Raspberry Pi notes and a "too slow" hint, clock source for LimeSDR and UHD.
- Network radios no longer block the UI while connecting and there is a
--safe-startflag; a lost network radio reconnects and clears the "lost" state (PR #234 by ffishman). rtl_tcp waits longer for slow Wi-Fi links.
Fixes
- Ionosphere sounder crash after Clear; DAB crash with RTL-SDR; Meshtastic EdgeFastLow preset; HFDL band box; crash notice restore dialog; DVB-S GSE and DJI test fixes; DTMB GBK service names (#224).
- Android: the spectrum redraws without a touch, errors show in a banner instead of crashing, a crash log is written, the screen stays on only while receiving.
- Website: download page has mirror links for places where GitHub is slow.
Known limits
- Most new modes and features are verified on generated signals only. Not tried on real hardware: KrakenSDR, TCI against a real ExpertSDR3, DRM xHE-AAC, second-generation Cospas beacons, logbook uploads against the live services, the Ham modes on air, multi-band on a real wideband radio.
- The DMR bit order is confirmed on one live system; NXDN, dPMR, D-STAR and P25 voice have loopback tests but are not yet checked on a real signal.
- KAAL lock is about 2 s (not instant); a faster lock needs a change to the KAAL signal.
- Windows: the DMR/AMBE plug-in names are
.dll; the codec loader fixes from 0.2.8 are not yet confirmed with the reporting user. - No terrain in the propagation map; HF is an estimate.
- Winradio WR-G31DDC is not supported (its API is 32-bit only); Tetrapol voice is not supported.