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xwefax

Receives HF weather fax and draws the chart

What it does

Demodulates HF radiofax -- the WEFAX transmissions weather services send on shortwave -- from receiver audio, synchronises on the start tone and phasing signal, and draws the chart as it arrives, saving it as an image.

Why you would want it

Radiofax is still transmitted: surface analyses, wind and wave charts and ice reports go out daily from several stations for the benefit of vessels at sea. Receiving one is the most tangible demonstration there is that HF carries real, current, useful information, and the resulting chart is a genuine forecast product rather than a novelty.

Before it will work

A receiver capable of SSB reception on HF, its audio into a sound card, and a schedule -- transmissions are at fixed times from fixed stations and tuning at the wrong moment gets you nothing. Rig control through the CAT interface is supported and optional.

How it installs

  • source (autotools) from https://www.qsl.net/5b4az/pkg/xwefax/xwefax-2.4.4.tar.bz2
  • build dependencies: build-essential, pkg-config, libgtk-3-dev, libasound2-dev
  • With libasound2-dev present, configure exits 0, make exits 0 and src/xwefax appears -- measured in a Debian 13 container on 2026-08-28. The tarball is not linked from the project page, which offers 2.4.3; 2.4.4 is present at the predictable URL and is the version AHRL bundles. The sha256 is ours, computed from that download: 5B4AZ publishes no checksums, so this pins the bytes reviewed and built and implies no upstream signature.

Binaries this produces:

  • src/xwefax

Known problems

A slanted image means the sound card's sample rate is not what the software assumes, exactly as with SSTV, and it is corrected once per machine rather than per reception. Missing the phasing signal at the start of a transmission produces an image offset horizontally, which looks like a decoding fault and is a timing one. fldigi also decodes WEFAX; whether this program does anything fldigi does not is an open question in the dispositions, which is why it does not claim to be a recommended default.

Keeping it current

  • probe: none
  • strategy: rebuild
  • 5B4AZ releases irregularly and the download directory is not indexed, so there is nothing to probe. Check qsl.net/5b4az/pages/wefax.html by hand.

Where to get help with the software itself

Neoklis Kyriazis, 5B4AZ -- the same author as nec2c and xdemorse. The project page carries the source and notes; there is no issue tracker.

Source: catalog/packages/xwefax.yaml