Changelog
Every version, what actually changed.
The blog covers the story behind the bigger changes. This is the scannable version — every release, in order. Nothing here is softened: a feature that got pulled back out says so.
v1.3 — current
- 📦 Works with InventoryBook, a new barcode inventory app: it can bring your Go Boxes over as boxes and your radios as items, and tapping a radio there opens its channels in RadioBook. Only apps signed with the same key can read your radios — nothing else on the phone can
- The app is called RadioBook everywhere now, including its name under the home-screen icon (it said "Radio Channels" before)
- 🧰 Go Boxes — a second tab on the home screen; put radios in a box, link a printed barcode to it, and scanning it opens the box. A one-tap Scan button sits in the bottom-left corner
- 🎚️ Presets per radio — name your own (JOTA, SKYWARN…), start one from the radio's current channels (MAIN), another preset, or empty, and tap to switch. Share MAIN or a preset to another radio, or MAIN to all of them
- 💾 Export for CHIRP — saves a radio's channels as a CHIRP .csv to import and upload to the radio from a computer; dragging channels into a new order renumbers them to match
- 📖 Ham Reference gained a graphical US band chart (2200m to 3cm, by license class) and a "What band is this?" frequency lookup
- 🎧 Listening List — save frequencies that are fun to listen to, with mode and notes
- Radios have an optional frequency range field (e.g. 136–174 / 400–520 MHz)
v1.2
- New version numbering from here on: this site shows x.y (major.minor); more frequent test builds in between are tracked on the app's own distribution page, not here
- 🗺️ Transmit Map replaces the old separate DX Map / DX Spots list / Coverage Map screens — one map for live DX spot great-circle lines (per-band toggle), a day/night grayline, and a real USGS topo layer with actual elevation contours
- 🏕️ POTA on the map — see who's activating a park right now, or tap a park (or type its reference) to activate it yourself; contacts logged during an activation land in your regular Logbook, already POTA-tagged, ADIF-ready
- 📡 Tap-to-scan elevation search — pick a point and a radius, and it scans real USGS elevation data across that area, cross-checks real OpenStreetMap road/trail data, and marks the 3 best, well-separated high points you could actually park or walk to
- 🗼 Add your own repeaters/towers to the map with full programming info (frequency/offset/tone/mode/power) — mark each one public (every user sees it) or private (only you, enforced on the server)
- A big navigation pass: the ☰ menu is grouped into sections instead of one flat list, with a "Recent" row for jumping back to your last few screens; a first-time welcome tour runs after your first login; both the home radio list and Logbook gained a search box
- Fixed the DX map (now folded into Transmit Map) showing "API KEY REQUIRED" tiled across the whole screen — CartoDB gated the free basemap tiles it used, so every tile came back as a watermarked placeholder. Switched to Esri's still-keyless dark basemap instead (details)
v1.11
- A real grayline on the DX map — night side shaded dark, day side light, computed from actual solar position instead of a fixed overlay (details)
- Six switchable color themes (Cyan/Amber, Phosphor Green, Amber Monochrome, Magenta Lab, Red Avionics, Ice White) — pick one in Settings and it retints the whole app instantly, no restart (details)
- A live DMR listening tab was built and shipped, then pulled back out days later — BrandMeister's Hoseline feed turned out to block any client that isn't their own official web player, protocol compliance included (the full story)
v1.10
- Settings → Themes existed for the first time — six palettes, but still needed a restart to apply
- Every callsign anywhere in the app (Logbook, Phone Book, Repeaters, DX Spots) became tappable straight to its QRZ.com page
- Replaced the old ⋮ dropdown with a proper slide-out menu you can drag into your own order
v1.9
- DX map shades night vs. day instead of just drawing a terminator line; spot lines are thicker and bolder
- Net Schedules gets a real calendar view, plus biweekly and monthly recurrence — auto-projected forward, not weekly-only anymore
- Repeaters can sync live from your own installed RepeaterBook app via its Connect integration, alongside the existing CSV import
- Ham Reference's band plan now shows Technician/General/Extra privileges per band
v1.8
- Added the DX map — color-coded great-circle lines (by band) between spotter and spotted station, plus a day/night grayline overlay computed from actual solar position, HamClock-style
- Callsigns are placed via a compact built-in prefix lookup rather than a full DXCC database, so a spot occasionally gets skipped instead of mis-plotted
v1.7
- Grayline indicator plus a solar-flux history graph on Band Conditions
- DX Spots — a live feed from a real public DX cluster
- Net Schedules — recurring local reminders
- Repeaters — import a CSV directory and browse it offline
- A home-screen widget, and CSV export for the Logbook
v1.6 & v1.6.1
- The biggest change yet: real accounts became required to use the app at all. Registered on a public server, no invite needed, each account's data private by default
- Local data quietly backs up to your account as you edit, and auto-downloads on a fresh device with an empty radio list — a snapshot backup, not live two-way sync
- Added Share via QR code for handing one radio directly to another logged-in user; sessions stay signed in for a week of use
- v1.6.1: replaced the barcode/QR scanner's engine to run entirely on-device (CameraX + ML Kit) instead of launching Google Play Services' own scanner screen
v1.5
- Added the Logbook with ADIF export, a My Station profile, grid square math, an expanded Ham Reference screen, and a home-screen UTC clock
v1.4
- A one-tap "add name later" button for callsign-only Phone Book entries, plus search by name or callsign
v1.3
- Added a standalone Phone Book — existing data carried forward untouched, as always with a schema change here
v1.2
- Colored band bars, favorites, drag-to-reorder, duplicate/copy channels between radios, export/import, share-a-radio, barcode linking
- Offset/tone quick-fill, a band plan reference screen, and saved locations + history for Band Conditions
v1.1
- Added the Band Conditions screen — 10m solar rating via live NOAA data, a terrain-aware 2m/70cm range calculator, and a tappable coverage map. First release to need internet and location permissions
v1.0
- First release — add radios, add channels, done. Everything since has built on top of that.
See something missing, or want the full story behind a change? Read the blog or get in touch.