MSHV Auto DX Chaser

MSHV Auto DX Chaser turns an MSHV FT8/FT4 station into an intelligent DX hunter that thinks like an experienced operator. It works the bands relentlessly — gathering intelligence from across the network, scoring every station it hears, and working the rare ones with human-like judgment — all on a “listen first, then pounce” philosophy. It never calls CQ; it only ever responds to stations it has actually decoded locally and decided are worth your time.

Like having a seasoned DXer sitting beside you at the radio, making split-second decisions about which station to call, how long to stay on it, and when to jump bands.

Attended operation only. The Auto DX Chaser is an assistant that hunts with you — it is designed to run only while you’re at the station as the control operator, monitoring its activity and ready to intervene. It is not intended for unattended or automatically controlled operation; you remain responsible for your station and for operating within your license privileges and local regulations.

Intelligence from four sources — but it only calls what you can hear

The chaser fuses spots from four independent streams to understand what’s active and where:

• Your local decodes — the only source it ever calls from. If you can’t hear it, it won’t call it.
• Reverse Beacon Network — the worldwide FT8 skimmer network for real-time activity.
• PSKReporter — reception reports and grid coverage, polled continuously.
• Five DX clusters in parallel (VE7CC, W3LPL, K1TTT, and more) for redundant, gap-free spotting.

External spots never trigger blind calls — they inform priority and confirm rarity, and a new entity must be backed by 2+ independent US-based spotters before it’s trusted. You only ever transmit to a station your own radio has copied.

A scoring engine that ranks every opportunity

Every station in the rolling decode cache gets a live priority score, and the highest score is worked first:

New all-time DXCC:  10,000 pts  ×  rarity multiplier (up to 5×, Club Log Most Wanted)
New band slot:       1,000 pts
New grid square:       500 pts
CQ bonus:             +200 pts   (calling CQ = higher hit rate)
SNR bonus:         +10 / dB above −15 dB
Multiple decodes:   +50 each

A P5 (North Korea) calling CQ at −5 dB, heard three times, scores 50,400 points — so the system instantly drops everything else and locks on. Your worked-before history (DXCC, band slots, grids) is imported from your ADIF log (LoTW, QRZ, or any logger), so it always knows an all-time-new-one from a dupe, and recently-worked calls are blacklisted so it never wastes a cycle.

Knows when to be patient — and when to pounce

• ATNO Chase Mode — unlimited persistence on all-time-new entities. For the final push toward DXCC Honor Roll, 5BDXCC, or the DXCC Challenge, it keeps calling a new one indefinitely, only giving up if the station vanishes from your decodes for a full minute.
• Scarce Target Mode — when viable targets thin out, it automatically stretches its patience, scaled by rarity: a top-10 entity gets up to 12.5 minutes of persistence instead of the usual 30 seconds.
• Engagement lock — the moment the DX answers you, it never abandons the exchange until the QSO is complete.
• Cross-band auto-QSY — when a new all-time entity is confirmed on another band, it can clear the queue, switch bands, and go hunt it (with propagation and false-spot checks first).

Built for serious DXers

Under the hood: a 2-minute rolling decode cache, propagation-aware band logic, a clean three-state engine, and full DXCC/band-slot/grid tracking. The Auto DX Chaser extends MSHV by LZ2HV — the popular multi-mode FT8/FT4 application — and runs on Windows and Linux, free and open source under GPLv3.

Grab the latest build from SourceForge, point it at your ADIF log, and let it hunt.