tucnak Cheat Sheet

2-minute read
hamradio
linux • tucnak • contest • logging

For some local activity contests on VHF and UHF as well as microwave band I have found tucnak to be a good solution for logging on a Linux system. It has hamlib TRX control and exports all commonly used contest log formats. And of course it is open source and the author is very friendly. He was so kind and accepted some feature requests and patches from me.

Tucnak Main Window
Tucnak Main Window

So this is my personal cheat sheet as most of the stuff can be controlled by user input.

The following snippets presume that you have created a contest and want to log a QSO. You can simply enter the callsign of your QSO partner followed by his report separated by a whitespace. If the contest uses numbers as exchange you can just append them to the report. So report of “599” and exchange of “014” is entered as “500014”. Tucnak will separate report from exchange internally. If you receive a grid locator from your QSO partner you can also add that separeted by a space.

Now if you want to your own report (which differs from default 59 or 599) you can enter that by hand and prepend it with ‘.

Hot Keys

Of course there is a number of very useful key kombinations as hot keys for different purposes. My commonly used are these:

  • CTRL + C: Switch band to 144MHz
  • CTRL + E: Switch band to 430MHz
  • CTRL + G: Switch band to 1.2GHz
  • CTRL + H: Switch band to 2.3GHz
  • CTRL + K: Switch band to 10GHz
  • CTRL + W: Switch band to 40m
  • CTRL + X: Switch band to 20m

  • CTRL + Z: Switch band to 10m

  • ESC: Always brings you back to the QSO input line

  • A: Show all QSOs (instead of the active band only). Works only if an item in the QSO list is selected

  • ALT + Y: Delete staged QSO data

  • ALT + B: Open band menu

  • ALT + 1: Switch to QSO list

  • ALT + 4: Switch to DX cluster

  • ALT + 7: Switch to KST chat

  • ALT + 9: Switch to map

  • F2: Save contest data

  • F3: Open contest

  • F4: Cycle through subwindows

  • ’ Force RST sent (e.g. 57’)

  • , Force RST received (e.g. 579,)

  • ; Force QSO number received (e.g. 014;)

  • . Force exchange / exchange not needed

References

[1] http://tucnak.nagano.cz/wiki/Hotkeys
[2] http://www.m1cro.org.uk/tucnak/tucnak-special-keys.pdf