# Carrier Wave — Amateur Radio QSO Logger > Amateur radio QSO logger with cloud sync, POTA management, and AI transcription. (iPhone/iPad app by James Vana.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/carrier-wave/id6758229084 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [James Vana](https://appshunter.io/developer/1871615875) - Category: Utilities - Price: $4.99 - Rating: 5.00/5 from 2 App Store ratings - Age rating: 12+ - Requires: iOS 26.2 · 60 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-03-17 - Data updated: 2026-09-12 - Monetization: paid - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/carrier-wave/id6758229084/reviews.md ## What is Carrier Wave? Carrier Wave is a fast, modern QSO logger for amateur radio operators. Log contacts from the field or the shack, sync to your favorite services, and track your progress - all from your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. KEY FEATURES - Fast command-driven logging with quick-entry shortcuts and keyboard accessory bar - Sync contacts to QRZ, Parks on the Air (POTA), and Ham2K LoFi - Real-time POTA and Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) spot monitoring with map view - POTA activation management with rove support, auto-spotting, and two-fer parks - CW recording and AI-powered transcription with karaoke-style playback - iCloud sync across all your devices - Automatic and manual database backups with iCloud Drive mirroring - ADIF import and export - Detailed statistics: bands, modes, DXCC entities, grids, states, parks - Social activity feed with friends list and on-air notifications - Apple Watch companion with live session updates and solar conditions - Landscape and iPad layouts with resizable sidebar panes - Accessibility: VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, and Reduce Motion support Carrier Wave is built for operators who want a fast, reliable logger that stays out of their way. Whether you are activating a park, chasing DX, or working a contest, it is designed to keep up with you. ## Key features - Fast command-driven logging - Sync contacts to QRZ, POTA, Ham2K - Real-time POTA and RBN monitoring - POTA activation management - AI-powered CW transcription - iCloud sync - Detailed statistics ## Chart rankings - #193 in Top Paid · Utilities (US App Store) ## Frequently asked questions about Carrier Wave ### What is Carrier Wave? Carrier Wave is a modern QSO logger for amateur radio operators. It allows users to log contacts, sync with services like QRZ and POTA, monitor real-time spots, and manage POTA activations. It also features AI-powered CW transcription. ### How much does Carrier Wave cost? Carrier Wave is a paid application, priced at $4.99. This one-time purchase grants access to all its features without ongoing subscription fees. ### What devices does Carrier Wave support? Carrier Wave is available for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, offering seamless iCloud sync across all your devices. This allows for logging and monitoring from various platforms. ### Does Carrier Wave have ads? No, Carrier Wave is ad-free. As a paid application, it provides an uninterrupted user experience without any advertisements. ### How often is Carrier Wave updated? The latest version, 1.5, was released on May 4, 2026, indicating a recent update. The app is generally updated to introduce new features and improve performance. ### What age rating is Carrier Wave? Carrier Wave has an age rating of 12+. This suggests it is suitable for users aged 12 and above, with content generally considered appropriate for this age group. ### Can Carrier Wave sync with other amateur radio services? Yes, Carrier Wave offers syncing capabilities with popular services such as QRZ, Parks on the Air (POTA), and Ham2K LoFi. It also supports ADIF import and export for broader compatibility. ### Does Carrier Wave offer offline functionality? While the description highlights syncing and real-time monitoring, the core logging functionality is likely available offline. However, features like syncing and real-time spot monitoring would require an internet connection. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.99.0 — 2026-09-11 This is a big one. Months of updates arrive together in this release. Carrier Wave Sync keeps your log in step across all your devices with end to end encryption. Create an account with a verified email, and the emailed magic link now opens the app directly to finish sign in. Your log stays encrypted with your passphrase. Contests are now first class. Start a contest session from the Sessions tab, pick from a full contest calendar, and log with a compact strike card that fits above the keyboard. CWT exchanges auto fill for members and non members alike. Starting a session is faster and smarter. The rebuilt wizard leads with the essentials, auto picks a clear starting frequency nestled between live spots, prepopulates your most likely park, and offers one tap Same as Last Session. Activation, casual, and contest starts each get their own tailored flow. Hunters get plenty. POTA n-fers are fully supported, so one QSO can credit multiple parks with per park dedup in the spot list. The hunter list refreshes with a pull, publishes spots within about a second of fetching, marks what is new since you last looked, and can filter by saved queries. The new Band Scope gives you a two lens spot browser with mode filters. The logger keyboard gains a Prefixes row that stamps callsign prefixes with one tap, and a new Keyboard Rows screen lets you enable and reorder every accessory row with a live preview. A callsign free quick entry line like 14.046 CW CN87 updates the session frequency, mode, and grid in one go. Radio macros arrive: build CAT command macros in the new editor, browse a shared catalog, and run them from the logger. SOTA logging gains an inline S2S summit field, self spotting, summit accurate session grids, and the correct 4 QSO activation threshold. New home screen widgets show hunting conditions and space weather storms. Maps are faster everywhere, and the club map now opens instantly. Settings were reorganized around what you are trying to do, onboarding asks how you operate to tailor the app, and the new Explore gallery helps you find features. Plus many fixes: background sync no longer risks a crash on suspension, ended sessions stay ended, stale callsign lookups refresh properly, FT8 audio warnings behave, and much more. ### 1.5 — 2026-05-04 Tiles on the Air is now a first-class activation program. Tag a session as TOTA, set your category, distance, elevation, and bonuses, and get a live four-tier score that mirrors the official rules. The session detail view shows a path map with the tile boundary overlay, a T3 candidate list correlated against the live TOTA spots feed, and a Personal Effort Factor badge. Upload the ADIF directly to TOTA from Settings. Brag sheets have been redesigned across TOTA, POTA, contest, and casual sessions. Every card shares a unified look with a contact map, big score, bonus chips, and an eight column stat grid for QSOs, distance, bands, duration, DXCC, farthest contact, modes, and rate. Sharing is now image based, so what you see is what lands in Messages, Mail, or AirDrop. CW Sweep, our macOS companion, can now be controlled from your phone over the local network. Pair Field with Sweep using a 6 digit code, and the Remote tab shows your radio's live frequency and mode plus a spot feed pulled from Sweep's curated firehose. Tap a spot to tune the radio, type a frequency, or fire any of your CW keyer macros from a redesigned dashboard of large, labeled tile buttons. Sessions started on either device now flow to the other automatically. FT8 got several fixes and a new look. The audio status row is now an EQ style level meter with peak indicator, replacing the old No Signal / Low / OK / Hot pill. The Audio is clipping warning no longer false fires whenever the radio is connected, and the Call CQ menu (CQ, CQ POTA, CQ DX, CQ SOTA) now actually presents the channel picker. POTA uploads are now done manually from the ADIF export sheet, with a first time walkthrough that explains how to upload on pota.app. Multi park N-fer activations now produce one ADIF per park when split. SOTA spot taps in the Hunt panel correctly prefill the logger. The CW Bridge gained Xiegu G90, QRP Labs QCX, and QMX support, an eight slot CW memory keyer with macro variables, FT8 encode and decode running on the bridge itself, and TRS jack plug detection. BLE pairing is now protected with a 6 digit passkey shown on the bridge OLED, and the bridge keeps up to four bonded devices for silent reconnects. Smaller improvements: a new HUNT logger command for one off QSOs at a different frequency, a Contests browser in the Activity tab backed by server published definitions, full ADIF field editing in the QSO editor with rich pickers for mode, band, DXCC, and state, a Callsign Lookup dashboard card that merges the old QRZ and RBN cards, SKCC member enrichment on spots, share links for callsigns, QSOs, parks, and summits, and Spotlight indexing for your log so QSOs show up in search and Siri. Reliability fixes: a Recovery Mode now appears when the database fails to open, instead of silently wiping it. iCloud sync no longer creates triplicate QSOs for phone mode contacts. Apple Watch reactivation no longer pins a CPU core when no Watch is paired. WiFi radio control no longer overheats the device when the radio is unreachable. Frequencies typed with thousands separators (14,060) now parse correctly. iPad sidebar tabs respond again after navigating into Hunter Log. The POTA Activations screen no longer crashes when CloudKit returns rows mid render. Friend requests no longer show not found errors after they have actually been accepted. ### 1.4 — 2026-04-02 IC-705 WiFi connections are now rock solid. Sessions stay connected indefinitely instead of dropping after a minute, and frequency and mode changes from the logger now reach the radio in real time. Reconnecting after switching apps works cleanly every time. The session detail view has been completely redesigned with a three-tier layout. Your session summary, QSO list, and an insights carousel with maps, states worked, and park cards are now organized for faster access. Equipment, band and mode badges with QSO counts, RST values, and percentile rankings are all visible at a glance. Park boundaries appear as an Instagram-style card carousel with GIS overlays. FlexRadio SmartSDR is now supported for CAT control. Connect to your FLEX-6400, 6600, or 6700 over LAN or SmartLink for frequency, mode, and PTT control with push-based status updates. Sync services now support per-service sync modes. Choose Bidirectional, Upload Only, or Download Only independently for QRZ, POTA, and eQSL. A new journal-based iCloud sync engine with SQLite snapshot bootstrap makes initial device setup nearly instant instead of syncing thousands of individual records. QRZ multi-callsign support lets you associate separate API keys with each callsign. QSOs are routed to the correct QRZ logbook during sync based on their myCallsign field. New experimental features include Log Scanning for importing handwritten paper logs via camera OCR, SDR Replay for instant audio playback during live sessions, and Activation Recommendations that suggest gear, parks, and bands based on propagation and your award progress. The equipment system has been upgraded with a structured catalog, fuzzy name matching, and iCloud sync. An interactive migration sheet helps map your existing equipment to catalog entries. Bug fixes include correcting iCloud sync triplicates in session detail, preventing QRZ frequency data loss during POTA cross-sync, fixing POTA download missing P2P park references, and resolving several crash-on-launch scenarios from duplicate data in clubs, activities, and friends sync. ### 1.3 — 2026-03-30 Icom WiFi CAT control for IC-705 and other WiFi-capable radios via Access Point or Station mode SMS spotting to self-spot POTA and SOTA activations when off-grid with no data connection Persistent hunt filters for activity, band, mode, club, and friends saved across sessions Persistent P2P filters for band and mode Clear filter indicators showing filled icon and summary text when filters are active Import ADIF into an existing session via long-press with metadata validation warnings Save session configuration as a named template for quick reuse Session QSO comment prepended to every QSO's notes when logged Edit session callsign from session detail menu updating all QSOs in the session RST parse order setting to parse sent RST first instead of received Experimental features hub in Settings with badges and opt-in visibility for alpha and beta features Events and CW Transcription tabs now hidden by default with opt-in from Settings Spot comments on QSOs now show shorter format Callsign changes now sync to activities server across all community data Fixed IC-705 WiFi connection timeout caused by 16-byte login confirmation in AP mode Fixed P2P spot enrichment overwriting QSO mode and frequency Fixed Club Log sync attempting uploads despite being a Coming Soon feature Battery drain improvements with timer tolerance on all timers enabling iOS timer coalescing Reduced spot monitoring and frequency activity polling intervals for better battery life Removed iCloud polling in favor of push notifications Removed server challenges, leaderboards, and challenge UI ### 1.2 — 2026-03-25 This update brings a major set of improvements to POTA activating, hunting, and logging across Carrier Wave and its macOS companion CW Sweep. Faster logging. Type multiple callsigns on one line to log a QSO for each. Frequency and mode auto-fill from live POTA spots when a callsign matches. Park-to-park contacts are detected automatically from active spots, filling in their park reference and showing a P2P badge. QSO recall. Long press any QSO in your session log or a spot in the hunter log to recall it into the quick entry form for re-logging. Great for two-fers and three-fers. Better POTA tools. Early and late shift windows now appear in the session header, calculated from park longitude. UTC day boundary markers show when your session crosses midnight. Split ADIF export lets you divide a session by UTC day, park reference, or operator for clean POTA uploads. Dashboard improvements. Stats now include detailed explanations showing exactly what is counted, excluded, and deduplicated. Long press any stat to report an inaccuracy with a full diagnostic bundle. Awards and Certificates section tracks Kilo progress with a progress bar. Session replay video. Export a session as a 1080p MP4 with your map, WebSDR audio, and event cards overlaid. Ready to upload to YouTube. Multi-operator sessions. Add additional operators to a session and export per-operator ADIF files. Club callsign support lets you operate under a club call while recording your personal callsign as operator. Space weather alerts. NASA DONKI notifications for geomagnetic storms, solar flares, and CMEs with in-app banners when HF propagation is degraded. Nearby suggestions. Session start now shows the closest parks and summits so you can tap to select without opening the full picker. CW Sweep on Mac. New POTA session wizard with band map, park search, rove planner, and spotting commands. Regulated band map shows operator class privilege boundaries. Sync reliability. iCloud sync now correctly handles stuck records, retries failed uploads, and shows pending records in a new diagnostic view. QRZ sync fixes inflated confirmation counts caused by duplicate QSOs. ADIF compliance. Exports now follow ADIF 3.1.7 spec for FT4 submodes, UTF-8 field lengths, and contest fields. QRZ uploads include name, location, and power. Stability. Fixed watchdog crashes on devices with many QSOs, reduced startup memory usage, and resolved several sync loop issues. ## Apps similar to Carrier Wave | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [SOTA Goat](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sota-goat/id590206108) | 4.5 (30) | $4.99 | Utilities | | [Greyline FT8](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/greyline-ft8/id6773455172) | 4.8 (12) | $3.99 | Utilities | | [K3iNetwork](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/k3inetwork/id463639462) | — | $3.99 | Utilities | | [ECHOCAT - Ham Radio Remote](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/echocat-ham-radio-remote/id6766321194) | 5.0 (1) | $9.99 | Utilities | | [TinyMIDI](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tinymidi/id6736350937) | — | Free | Utilities | | [SOTA Log](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sota-log/id6759876471) | 5.0 (2) | Free | Utilities | --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-12.*