Overview:

FAROS

Afreet Software has a suite of programs out for the Amateur Radio Operator, which are very useful, and in some cases work together swapping data between themselves, I have a few of them and will review them all over the next few months.  I will start with FAROS.

I like to see when the bands are open and have been using a program called HamCap, that program provides a nice little map of the predicted propagation.  I wanted real time data, not predictions, so I researched the available options for this, and found two programs which looked promising, FAROS, and BeaconSee.  After downloading BeaconSee, and FAROS, I set about to see which one was best for my purposes of seeing real-time propagation.  It soon became apparent that FAROS was superior in many ways for my use.  BeaconSee while working, is a bit of a pain to set up, while FAROS is literally install, select your radio, and hit the go button.  I don’t want to turn this into a FAROS vs. BeaconSee review, so I will not mention BeaconSee again.  However to be fair to BeaconSee; it is free, while FAROS costs money. Read more »