QRZ Assistant now available in Google Play

Today we are pleased to announce that our flagship app for Android, QRZ Assistant is now available to all users worldwide.

This app replaces our older product known as QRZ Droid. This new version includes a ton of new features and graphics, including a live GPS-enabled compass that plots distance and direction for both local and remote antenna alignment.





For example, suppose that the bearing to a station in Turkey is 28 degrees (ref. true north). Your antenna should pointed northeast at 28 degrees to aim for the shortest path to Turkey. What direction then, would you expect the station in Turkey need to align with your QTH? In this example, the "receive bearing" for the Turkey station would be 328 degrees! These are Great Circle bearings that are based on the true shortest path between stations. Thanks to the magic of Android and their wonderful built-in geographic functions, we are able to provide highly accurate bearings and distances for both ends of the QSO.

Of course, QRZ Assistant is a great callsign lookup app as well! Get instant access to the entire collection of 1.5 Million call signs at the tip of your finger, any time, wherever you go (cell coverage permitting). Check out my listing below:



The app also provides complete integration with Google Maps, along with street, satellite, and terrain mapping options.

We hope that you'll find this a handy addition to your phone. At only 3.7 Mb, it provides a lot of features in a compact space. Many more features per megabyte than nearly all Windows programs HI HI.

The release of this edition culminates a 3 month concentrated effort where my wife, family and friends had been wondering "where's Fred?", or more succinctly, "IS IT DONE YET????". Well, after a successful Beta test I'm very happy to answer in the affirmative: YES IT IS!

Many will wonder about availability for iPhone, IOS platforms. As you may or may not know, in today's world, there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING in common between Android and iPhone software development. There is no viable way to write a single program that works on both phones. The only way to bring this to iPhone is to start a brand new project, and, ready for it.... another 3 month development effort! I would be kidding if I said that "my wife said OK" with getting started on it today. I/we need a break from my lonely existence in my basement office, and with any luck, I'll be ready to tackle it later in the year. And oh, note the exuberance I must anticipate knowing that I'll have to learn yet another new and largely perfunctory programming language (either Swift or Objective-C), a whole new operating system (IOS), and then hold my breath and hope that Apple approve the app for publication. It would be easier to learn Chinese, I think. Nonetheless, I'm up to the task, even if it's just a bit begrudging of Apple and their iron-fisted control over the ecosystem.

So, fire up your Android phone and go to Google Play. Search for QRZ Assistant and be on your way!

73, -fred