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Nexus manual · DX & awards

Needed — DX that's on the air now

The Needed board is the flagship DX-chasing surface: every station on the air right now, ranked by what it’s worth to your log. It’s the answer to “there are 400 stations on the band — which one should I turn the beam at?” And it’s built so you can trust the answer: every row carries the evidence that the path to that station is real for you, not for a superstation two time zones away.

The tour

Each row is one opportunity, ranked by value to your log:

  • wanted (120) — a call on your wanted list; nothing outranks it,
  • ATNO (all-time-new-one, 100) — an entity you’ve never worked,
  • new zone (70),
  • new state (60) — a state you still need for WAS,
  • new grid (55) — a Maidenhead square you have not worked,
  • new band (50) — an entity you’ve worked, but never on this band,
  • new mode (30) — an entity you’ve worked, but never in this mode class (CW / Phone / digital) on any band. The row reads “(any band)” because that is the whole claim: it is the per-mode DXCC axis, not a band slot. Working the station on the band in front of you closes it.
  • confirmation opportunity (10) — worked on this band, not yet confirmed.

DXpedition, POTA, and SOTA chips layer on top. Rows dedupe by (call, band, mode-class), so the same DX on 20m CW and 20m FT8 are two distinct, separately clickable opportunities.

The evidence line is what makes it trustworthy. Every row shows why it believes the station is reachable from your QTH:

  • “heard by K9LC (EN52, 26 km) + N9CO (62 km), 4 min ago” — near receivers on PSK Reporter heard them,
  • “decoded by YOUR radio on this band” — you heard them yourself,
  • “spotted by 2 near skimmers” — nearby RBN skimmers spotted them.

Spots age out at 15 minutes, and each row shows its age, so you’re never chasing a station that left twenty minutes ago.

Reading an evidence line

The admission rules are deliberately conservative, so a row only appears when the path is genuinely plausible for you:

  • PSK Reporter evidence must come from receivers near you — within 1500 km on HF, 250 km on VHF (the sporadic-E patch radius).
  • VHF needs require at least two distinct near receivers and a far transmitter, so a single superstation can never light up 6 m for you.
  • Cluster spots on VHF need two near spotters.
  • The “getting out” inference (your signal is reaching region X) is disabled on VHF entirely, where Es-patch disjointness makes it invalid.

If a row is on the board, the receipts are on the row. If the evidence looks thin, it’s telling you the truth about a marginal path.

Core workflows

Work a spot in one click

  1. Click any row. Nexus QSYs band + mode + exact frequency atomically, opens the matching cockpit, and — for CW/Phone rows — prefills the callsign in the log strip.
  2. If the DX is running split, Nexus reads it: it parses pileup split offsets from cluster comments (UP 2, DN 1.5, QSX 7.205) and pre-sets rig split so your transmit lands where the DX is listening.

That’s the same atomic “work it” path as double-clicking a spot on the Connect map or pressing ▶ Work in a Chase pane.

Filter the board

Filters persist across sessions:

  • Need type — ATNO / new zone / new band / new mode / confirmation.
  • Band — multi-select.
  • Mode class — CW / Phone / digital.

CW and Phone rows appear only when those operating modes are enabled (Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Features), so a digital-only operator’s board stays clean. This is also why phone/SSB needs can look sparse: RBN auto-spots only CW and digital, so SSB needs come from the human DX cluster — add cluster nodes in Settings ▸ Logging & Connectors to widen phone coverage.

Pop it out to a second monitor

The board tears off into its own OS window. A header checkbox, “open at launch,” controls whether that detached window force-opens on every start — untick it and it stays where you left it (the setting persists).

Honest limits

  • The board only shows what’s on the air now — it’s a real-time chase tool, not an all-time wanted list. Age-out is 15 minutes.
  • Phone/SSB needs are sparse by design — RBN carries only CW and digital; SSB depends on human cluster spots you configure.
  • VHF is held to a higher evidence bar (two near receivers, no getting-out inference) — this is deliberate, to keep a single superstation from fabricating an opening.

This page is synced from docs/guide/needed-dx.md in the Nexus repo. Corrections belong there.