Nexus operator manual

Every section of Nexus gets a page here: what it does, how to drive it, and — at the end of each page — what it deliberately does not do. These pages are the same files that ship with the app, synced out of the Nexus repository on every build rather than copied, so the manual you read here and the manual in the source tree cannot drift apart.

New to Nexus? Start with Quick Start — installer to a logged FT8 contact in about fifteen minutes — then come back for the section you're working in.

Nexus is a free, open-source ham radio workstation for Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi that puts the whole station — digital, phone, CW, satellites, propagation, DX chasing, logging, and awards — into one modern app. This guide is the per-section reference: pick the section you’re working in and jump to its page.

1.0.0 closes the beta period. The habit the beta was written with does not close with it: where a feature is opt-in, or a number comes from simulation rather than the air, these pages say so, and each page ends with what its section does not do.

The supported window floor is 1024×768. Everything is reachable there — some columns scroll to reach the bottom of themselves, and the pages that measure it say where the fold falls at which size.

How the app is laid out

The left rail is your section switcher. At the top is the FT8/FT4 ⇄ Tempo mode switch — it swaps only the mode-specific operating cockpit (the digital FT8/FT4 cockpit vs. the Tempo TempoFast/TempoDeep chat cockpit). Everything else — the map, the Needed board, the logbook, awards, settings — is shared across both modes.

The Now-Bar runs across the top from every section: UTC clock, current band, TX/RX state, and the “is the band open / am I getting out / what do I need” answer, with feed-health pills that tell “connected but quiet” apart from “down.”

Any panel can tear off into its own OS window (the ⧉ pop-out control) for a multi-monitor shack.

First run

On first launch a three-step wizard — Station, Rig, Goals — gets you on the air. Every step is skippable and everything it sets stays editable later in Settings. The Goals step shapes which sections appear by default; you can turn any section on or off in Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Features. If you’d rather set things by hand, the Settings reference covers every field.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts are section-specific and only fire in the active view (never while you’re typing in a field):

Section	Keys
Operate	Esc halt TX · F4 clear DX call · F6 re-decode last period · Alt+1–Alt+6 fire a Tx slot
CW	F1–F8 fire macros · Esc abort keying · PgUp/PgDn nudge WPM (±2, Shift ±4)
Phone	Space push-to-talk (hold)