Good news for HamClock users and fans: A free community backend server has become available. The website, hamclock.com, make HamClock's continued functions available for free following a successful reconfiguration of the clock to the new server. The functions include, among other things, weather pressure maps, aurora map generation, ham news headlines, realtime PSK Reporter spot data, VOACAP propagation reports and Kp index from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The functions are made possible through the work of Bruce Edrich, W4BAE, who built the project upon the open-hamclock-back-end. Updating can be done via two simple text changes -- either to the hosts file or to the command that starts HamClock. The project is independent of the feeds from the original site, clearskyinstitute.com.

It is one of several developments as forks of the open HamClock back-end created by Brian Wilkins KO4AQF and Austin Parsons KN4LNB. Brian told Newsline that installation instructions and other information can be found on GitHub. The link is in the text version of this week's newscast at arnewsline.org.