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) |
3.46B |
| Collection Start | 1970-01-01 |
| Days Collected | 20597 |
| Daily Spot Rate (recent 7 days) | ~26M spots/day |
| Peak Spots/Second (observed) | ~300 |
| Unique Transmitter Callsigns | 729,278 |
| Unique Receiver Callsigns | 80,295 |
| Unique Grid Pairs | 694K |
Mode Breakdown¶
| Mode | Spots | Pct |
|---|---|---|
| FT8 | 3.20B | 92.36% |
| WSPR | 140.7M | 4.06% |
| FT4 | 83.6M | 2.41% |
| CW | 16.5M | 0.48% |
| JS8 | 11.6M | 0.34% |
| VARAC | 6.7M | 0.19% |
| FT2 | 4.7M | 0.14% |
| RTTY | 446,643 | 0.01% |
| FREEDV | 195,925 | 0.01% |
| JT65 | 60,614 | 0.0% |
Band Breakdown¶
| Band | Spots | Pct of Total |
|---|---|---|
| 20m | 1.16B | 33.46% |
| 40m | 651.7M | 18.82% |
| 15m | 477.5M | 13.79% |
| 17m | 339.3M | 9.8% |
| 30m | 276.7M | 7.99% |
| 10m | 272.7M | 7.87% |
| 80m | 130.3M | 3.76% |
| 12m | 101.3M | 2.93% |
| 160m | 18.4M | 0.53% |
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.