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twclock

World clock for the operating position, with a CW station-ID timer

What it does

Shows UTC alongside several time zones you choose, and runs a countdown timer that sounds your callsign in Morse on the sound card when it expires -- speed and tone are adjustable. The Morse is generated by code shared with unixcw and qrq rather than by a recording.

Why you would want it

Two things every operating position needs and neither is worth a browser tab. UTC because logs and schedules are in it and local time is a source of error; the ID timer because most licences require periodic identification and the interval is exactly the sort of thing that slips while you are concentrating on a contact.

Before it will work

An X11 session with Motif, which Debian provides, and a working sound output for the ID. Your callsign has to be set in the program before the ID means anything.

How it installs

  • apt: twclock

Known problems

It is a Motif application and looks it -- the widget set predates GTK, so it will not match any modern desktop theme and does not scale on HiDPI. The identification interval that satisfies your licence is a legal question this program does not know the answer to: it counts down from whatever you set, and setting it correctly is yours. Upstream is gone. Debian declares the Homepage as wa0eir.bcts.info/twclock.html; that hostname does not resolve at all, and neither does the wa0eir.home.mchsi.com address in the package's copyright file (both checked 2026-08-28). The software works and is packaged; there is nowhere to report a bug except the distribution, and no new version is coming. Recorded rather than left for the next person to find from a browser error.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade
  • Whatever the distribution ships. Upstream is unreachable — see documentation.known_problems — so there is no upstream release to track and apt is the only source of a change.

Where to get help with the software itself

There is no working upstream. Debian's package is the only support route, which is why the tracker is cited above rather than a project page.

Source: catalog/packages/twclock.yaml