How to Play

Goal: work as much DX as possible before the timer runs out. The map shows where signals are coming from, but the panadapter is where you actually make the catch.

Desktop Controls

• 📍 QTH: set or change your station location using a 4, 6 or 8 character Maidenhead locator, or exact latitude/longitude. Your choice is saved locally.
• ⏹ Stop: aborts the current run in any game mode.
• 🔊 Vol: adjusts the whole radio mix from −6 dB to +6 dB. 0 dB is the original/default level.
• Live Conditions: needs an internet connection. If it is unavailable, the game falls back gracefully.
• Map imagery: is supplied online by OpenStreetMap. The game itself can still run if tiles are unavailable.

Basic Gameplay

• Click signals in the panadapter before they fade.
• Map markers are for context only — clicking them does not work the station.
• Normal stations usually need one good click.
• Pile-ups need several clicks to break through.
• Split pile-ups are listening UP, so click the offset response area, not the DX itself.
• Greyline Challenge is deliberately niche: if your station is not near sunrise or sunset, the band may feel quiet.
• GL marks a greyline-favoured station; GL★ marks a stronger greyline opportunity.

Special Signals

• DXP — DXpedition to a rare location. Harder to work but worth many points.
• 🌊 /MM — Maritime mobile station at sea. Drifts slowly across the ocean and may appear in unexpected places.
• 👻 Ghost signals — Weak or ambiguous traces. Most are false decodes and will cost points, but a few may be genuine.
• 🚨 M7SQI — Ultra-rare special appearance with a very high reward.

Strategy Tips

• Watch signal strength and timing — fading signals are harder to work.
• Split DX often listens slightly higher than instructed.
• Not every signal is worth chasing — risk management is part of the game.
• Maintaining a streak builds combo bonuses.

Scoring

• Longer distance = more points.
• Weaker signals = more points.
• Rarer regions = more points.
• Pile-up events and the ultra-rare M7SQI event = major bonus.
• Some pile-ups may call for a specific region only. If you are not in that region and click anyway, expect pain.

📊 How scoring works

Penalties

• Wrong-band catches hurt, and become more costly once your score is high.
• Clicking the DX instead of UP in a split pile-up carries a significant penalty.
• Random misses also chip away at your score, especially later in a run.
• False ghost signals are usually a bad gamble, but a genuine one can pay very well.
• Map markers are context only — clicking them also costs points.

Bands

• 40m: lower-band workhorse, more local and regional.
• 20m: balanced DX option.
• 15m: stronger high-band DX under good conditions.
• 10m: feast or famine, but glorious when open.

Modes

• Contest: 3-minute sprint.
• Free Play: endless operating until you press Stop.
• DX Hunter: 4-minute session with fewer, rarer, more valuable stations.
• Greyline Challenge: 4-minute session where terminator-favoured paths score best. It is intentionally most playable when your own QTH is near dawn or dusk, so openings may be sparse outside true greyline windows.
• Survival: 3-minute session where score decays unless you keep working stations.
• Multi-Band Strategy: 4-minute session where band choice matters more.

Conditions

The game uses a simplified propagation model. Live retrieves current solar/geomagnetic values through the DX Hunter service, while the other settings force quieter, stronger, stormier or specialist conditions. In Greyline Challenge, your saved QTH and local dawn/dusk timing matter much more than in the other modes.

Sound

SFX are generated locally by the application. The Vol control adjusts the complete radio mix by ±6 dB while preserving the relative hiss and effect levels. For the rare M7SQI event, the game uses m7sqi_au.mp3 — an actual recording of M7SQI received in Australia via SDR, i.e. genuine long-path DX and a perfectly respectable excuse for modest boasting.

Privacy

DX Hunter stores QTH, scores, logbook, awards and selected settings locally on your device. Live propagation and OpenStreetMap tiles require ordinary internet requests, but DX Hunter does not upload your saved QTH, scores or logbook with those requests. No advertising, analytics or user profiling is built into the application.

© 2026 Steve MacDonald-Brown (M7SQI) — Released March 2026. DX HUNTER concept, gameplay, design, and implementation are original work.
DX Hunter is free software under the GNU GPL version 3. Separate commercial/proprietary licensing is available from the author.

How Scoring Works

Each successful catch starts with a base score, then bonuses are added for distance and weak signals. That subtotal is multiplied by rarity, and finally any special bonuses or penalties are applied.

Core Formula

Score = round((10 + distance bonus + weak-signal bonus) × rarity)

Distance Bonus

• 0–999 km: small bonus
• 1000–4999 km: moderate bonus
• 5000–11999 km: strong bonus
• 12000+ km: very strong bonus

Weak-Signal Bonus

• SNR ≤ -20: +24
• SNR -19 to -15: +16
• SNR -14 to -10: +10
• SNR -9 to -5: +5
• SNR -4 and stronger: +0

Rarity Multiplier

After the base, distance, and weak-signal bonus are added together, the result is multiplied by a rarity value. Nearby/common regions score less; rarer DX regions score more.

• Common regions: around ×1.0
• Useful DX: around ×1.25 to ×1.45
• Rare DX: around ×1.7 to ×2.2
• M7SQI special event: ×4.5 before its special bonus

Special Bonuses

• Pile-up: +40, plus +10 for each required hit
• DXpedition: final score ×2.4
• 🌊 Maritime Mobile (/MM): +12
• 🚨 M7SQI special event: +220
• Greyline Challenge: +10 or +22 for greyline-favoured paths
• Multi-Band Strategy: final score ×1.25

Ghost Signals

• 👻 False ghost: costs points
• 👻 Genuine ghost: may still reward points

Ghost signals are designed as risky targets. Most are false decodes or phantom traces and will punish the gamble, but the rare genuine ghost can pay out very handsomely.

Combo Bonus

• No combo bonus for the first 4 consecutive catches
• 5 in a row: combo bonus begins
• Higher streaks: larger combo bonuses
• Misses, penalties, and bad catches: reset the combo

Penalties

• Wrong band: heavy fixed penalty plus a percentage of current score
• Wrong region on “X ONLY” pile-up: heavy penalty plus a percentage of current score
• Clicking a map marker: small fixed penalty
• Panadapter miss: moderate fixed penalty plus a percentage loss
• Clicking the DX instead of UP: stronger penalty plus a percentage loss
• False ghost signal: severe penalty
• Survival mode: score decays continuously through both flat loss and percentage loss

In short: penalties scale with success, so sloppy operating becomes more expensive once your score climbs.

Examples

• Ordinary nearby contact: typically a few tens of points
• Decent intercontinental DX: often several dozen points
• Rare pile-up: often 100+ depending on difficulty
• Ghost signal: risky — may cost heavily or reward well
• M7SQI event: deliberately over-the-top

Actual scores vary widely due to distance, signal strength, rarity, combo bonuses, special events, and scaling penalties.

Precision and timing matter more than speed alone.

🔊 Audio Level

Adjust the complete DX Hunter radio mix. 0 dB is the original/default level.

Range: −6 dB to +6 dB. The setting is saved locally.

📍 Station QTH

Set the station location used for propagation, distance, greyline calculations and scoring. The setting is stored locally on this device.

Entering a locator fills the latitude and longitude with the centre of that Maidenhead square. You can fine-tune those coordinates before saving if desired.

Your saved QTH remains on this device and is not sent to the DX Hunter server.

Privacy Notice

DX Hunter is designed to keep gameplay data on your own device. It does not include advertising, analytics, cross-site tracking or user profiling.

Data stored locally

• Your saved station QTH (Maidenhead locator and/or coordinates)
• Leaderboard scores
• Logbook entries
• Awards and lifetime statistics
• Selected application preferences, including the audio level

Internet connections

Live Conditions connects to the DX Hunter service at macalchemist.net to obtain current propagation data. Your saved QTH, scores, logbook and awards are not included in that request.

The map obtains map tiles from OpenStreetMap. As with normal internet connections, remote services can receive ordinary technical connection information such as your IP address.

Location

The Desktop Edition does not use browser GPS/geolocation or an IP-location service. Your station location is the QTH you choose in the 📍 QTH dialog, and it remains in local application storage.

Clearing data

The Reset/Clear controls remove the corresponding leaderboard, logbook or awards data. The QTH dialog can clear the saved station location. Application storage can also be removed manually from your operating system if you want a completely fresh start.

No privacy statement can prevent the normal network metadata associated with contacting an internet service; this notice describes what DX Hunter itself intentionally stores and sends.

⚖ Licence & Third-Party Notices

DX Hunter

Copyright © 2026 Steve MacDonald-Brown (M7SQI).

DX Hunter is free software: you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

DX Hunter is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the accompanying LICENSE file for the full GPLv3 text.

Separate commercial/proprietary licensing is available from the author.

Third-party components

• Leaflet — BSD 2-Clause licence.
• OpenStreetMap data/tiles — © OpenStreetMap contributors; data available under the Open Database License (ODbL).
• pywebview — BSD 3-Clause licence.
• Qt / PySide6 — distributed under the applicable Qt open-source licence terms (including LGPL/GPL terms for the components used).
• Python — Python Software Foundation and associated licences.

The distribution includes a THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt file with further details and source/licence references. Third-party components remain under their own licences.

About DX Hunter

DX Hunter is an amateur-radio DX simulation game built around real operating ideas rather than pure arcade reflexes. The map shows where signals are coming from, but the panadapter is where you actually make the catch.

The game draws on genuine amateur radio themes including pile-ups, split operation, greyline-favoured paths, DXpeditions, maritime mobile stations, weak-signal work, and the occasional dubious ghost trace that probably should have stayed in the noise.

It is designed to be both entertaining and lightly educational: experienced operators should recognise the logic, while newcomers can get a feel for timing, band choice, propagation mood, and DX risk-versus-reward without needing a tower, amplifier, or forgiving neighbours.

Desktop Edition 1.0 packages the DX Hunter V6.3 game in a native desktop window. QTH, scores, awards, logbook and selected settings are stored locally. Internet access is used only for features such as live propagation data and OpenStreetMap tiles; no advertising or analytics are built in.

© 2026 Steve MacDonald-Brown (M7SQI) — Released March 2026. DX HUNTER concept, gameplay, design, and implementation are original work.
No antennas, amplifiers, or HOA approval required.

Bug reports, feedback, or propagation anomalies — QSL via DX-Hunter [at] macalchemist [dot] net (direct preferred)