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This week, a new ham radio application for the Mac occasions a visit to a Mac ham app Web site.

Beneath the simple, but elegant home page of W7AY lies some excellent Amateur Radio applications for Macintosh computers.

Apple Macintosh sales are brisk these days and their market share is growing (you can look it up).

On the heels of that news, Kok Chen, W7AY, e-mailed me that he has come up with another Amateur Radio application for hams using Macs: QST Browser, a Mac OS X application for searching and viewing the back issues of periodicals that are published by the ARRL in CD-ROM format. Chen wrote, "Like cocoaModem, the app and source code are completely free (I am retired and no longer write code for money)."

Visit W7AY’s home page, click on the Applications button, then click on QST Browser link and you will be able to download the application and view the detailed user manual.

Getting back to the Applications button, if you are not familiar with W7AY’s work, you may want to click it again and find out about the other ham radio applications Chen has written for Mac computers:

•  cocoaModem, an AppleScriptable program for sending and receiving Amateur Radio digital mode signals.
•  cocoaPTT, an AppleScriptable program used to perform push-to-transmit through a serial port.
•  µH Router, an AppleScriptable program that allows multiple applications to concurrently use functions in a microHAM microKEYER, DIGI KEYER or CW KEYER.

Until next time, keep on surfin’.

Editor’s note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, has been a Mac owner since Apple introduced the first Mac back in 1984. Today, he uses his Mac Powerbook to surf the Internet searching for that perfect ham radio Web page. To communicate with Stan, send him e-mail or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin’ is indexed here, so go look it up (whatever it may be).