PSK Reporter¶
PSK Reporter collects automatic reception reports from stations running digital mode software (WSJT-X, JTDX, fldigi, and others). When a station decodes an FT8, FT4, WSPR, or other digital transmission, the software silently reports the reception to pskreporter.info. No operator action required.
The result is a near-real-time view of what digital operators are actually hearing. At ~26 million spots per day, it is the highest-volume live feed in the dataset. 88.7% of spots are FT8, with WSPR, FT4, and other modes making up the remainder.
Collection started February 10, 2026 via MQTT feed from pskreporter.info. No historical bulk download exists — this data can only be collected forward.
Collection Method¶
Spots are collected via MQTT from mqtt.pskreporter.info:1883, an anonymous
public broker operated by Tom Sevart, M0LTE. The collector subscribes to the
pskr/filter/v2/# topic and receives all reported spots in real time. Output
is hourly-rotated gzip JSONL written to /mnt/pskr-data/YYYY/MM/DD/.
The pskr-collector service runs continuously on the 9975WX as a systemd
unit. Ingest to ClickHouse (pskr.bronze) runs hourly.
Dataset Statistics¶
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
Total Rows (pskr.bronze) |
7.25B |
| Collection Start | 1970-01-01 |
| Days Collected | 20723 |
| Daily Spot Rate (recent 7 days) | ~26M spots/day |
| Peak Spots/Second (observed) | ~300 |
| Unique Transmitter Callsigns | 1.4M |
| Unique Receiver Callsigns | 105,711 |
| Unique Grid Pairs | 694K |
Mode Breakdown¶
| Mode | Spots | Pct |
|---|---|---|
| FT8 | 6.68B | 92.18% |
| WSPR | 304.8M | 4.21% |
| FT4 | 183.1M | 2.53% |
| CW | 35.3M | 0.49% |
| JS8 | 23.5M | 0.32% |
| VARAC | 12.2M | 0.17% |
| FT2 | 5.8M | 0.08% |
| RTTY | 651,160 | 0.01% |
| FREEDV | 375,213 | 0.01% |
| JT65 | 96,535 | 0.0% |
Band Breakdown¶
| Band | Spots | Pct of Total |
|---|---|---|
| 20m | 2.76B | 38.09% |
| 40m | 1.23B | 17.04% |
| 15m | 1.07B | 14.8% |
| 17m | 803.0M | 11.08% |
| 30m | 548.5M | 7.57% |
| 10m | 379.2M | 5.23% |
| 80m | 213.6M | 2.95% |
| 12m | 154.5M | 2.13% |
| 160m | 27.4M | 0.38% |
How PSKR Differs from WSPR¶
PSK Reporter and WSPR capture different populations. WSPR reporters use dedicated low-noise SDR receivers and run 24/7. PSK Reporter reporters are FT8 operators who happen to have reception reporting enabled. The overlap in spots is approximately 15% — these are genuinely different measurements of different propagation activity.
PSK Reporter cannot capture SSB. For voice propagation, see Contest Logs.
Data Quality Notes¶
- SNR range: -34 to +38 dB observed. This is the operational digital range — above the WSPR floor, below the contest SSB ceiling.
t(timestamp),sc/rc(callsigns),sl/rl(grids),rp(SNR),f(freq Hz),md(mode) are the primary fields from the MQTT JSON payload.- Grid squares are Maidenhead 4-character or 6-character. 4-character grids are normalized for joining with other sources.