The end of an era: HamClock is being discontinued

The amateur radio world has lost one of its most popular shack tools: following the death of its developer, Elwood Downey, WB0OE, further development of HamClock has officially been discontinued.

For countless radio amateurs worldwide, HamClock served as the central information display for space weather, DX cluster data and satellite tracking. The news of the developer’s death also marks the end of the project. The current version 4.22 is the final official release and will no longer receive any further feature updates or bug fixes.

Of particular concern to users: the stability of the external online data sources that feed HamClock can no longer be guaranteed from mid-2026 onwards. Should interfaces at the NOAA or other providers change, the display will gradually cease to function. The community is already looking for open-source alternatives to fill the gap left by WB0OE in the long term.

On GitHub, the first developers have already come together to continue the source code under the name ‘HamClock-NG’ (Next Generation). The aim is to maintain the existing codebase and, above all, to ensure connectivity to the changing data sources (API interfaces) of NOAA and other services.

The ‘QuadClock’ project is increasingly being mentioned as a potential successor. It is based on a more modern architecture and offers similar visualisations for solar activity, the Grayline and DX statistics, but is more heavily optimised for web technologies.