Push-to-talk with the people around you — over Wi-Fi, with no internet, no repeater, no reflector and no digital-voice hotspot. A calling channel plus twelve private working channels, with text riding the same channel as the voice. It is not a radio and needs no licence, so unlicensed helpers and family can join a field-day team too. Bring your own network — a pocket travel router, or any access point with the internet unplugged.
Hold the big PTT button and talk; let go and listen. Half-duplex, with a roger beep, a courtesy tone and a time-out-timer warning — the operating feel of an HT, on the phone you already carry.
The one thing no radio on earth does. The floor is granted, not grabbed: press PTT and the button goes amber while your mic stays shut, then opens on grant with an audible tone. Two people physically cannot transmit over each other.
Nothing is relayed, nothing is linked, nothing leaves the field. No account, no server, no telemetry — the traffic never goes further than the network you brought with you.
CALL is where everyone meets, labelled with your own region's simplex calling frequency. Twelve working channels sit under it — split off, work, and come back.
Every working channel is genuinely encrypted, keyed from the code the first station set — so somebody nearby with a laptop cannot read it off the air. A padlock on the tile means somebody there is using one. CALL is deliberately in the clear: it is the meeting place. Because this is not radio, encrypting the rest is perfectly legal here.
CALL is open — anyone on the same Wi-Fi taps it and is in, exactly like a calling frequency. Each of the twelve working channels has a code, and the code is not a label that gets checked: it is what unlocks the channel. The first person there sets it and shares it by QR or reads it out; a wrong code is not an error, the channel is simply silent. And the real front door is the network itself — everyone has to be on your Wi-Fi to reach you at all.
"Say again?" solved. Every channel keeps a rolling two minutes of received audio you can play back — 10 s, 30 s, 1 m or 2 m — which a handheld has never been able to do.
Type while somebody else is transmitting. Text rides the same channel as the voice and is never subject to the floor — you cannot double on text.
One tap for the things you actually send at a site: QSY to another channel, QRT, your grid square, or a call for help.
A live roster of every station on the channel with signal bars, so you know who can hear you before you key up — and who just walked out of range.
Ham Chatting runs in the foreground, like holding a handheld. While you are on a channel it keeps the screen awake for you, so the phone will not sleep mid-net.
Ham Chatting sends uncompressed audio by default, so a voice sounds like a voice — not like the synthetic, underwater speech a low-bitrate radio codec produces. Pick Wide for the most natural sound, Clear for uncompressed telephone quality, or Efficient when the channel is crowded and every kilobit counts. You always hear other stations the way they chose to send.
Transmit and hear yourself played straight back, so you can set your level and prove the audio path before a net starts — no second person required.
This never touches the amateur bands, so no licence is needed and nothing here is subject to on-air rules. It cannot key a radio, by design.
The same theming, font scaling and weekly tips as the rest of the Unixeer™ apps.
Yousuf AL Balushi (A41UX) started his Ham Radio journey in November 2024 as an official member of The Royal Omani Amateur Radio Society (ROARS).
Ham Chatting joins the Unixeer™ portfolio alongside Ham Satting, Ham Logging, Ham Learning, Ham Gaming, Ham Engineering, Ham Imaging, Ham Listening, Ham Voicing, Ham Signaling and Ham Training — the off-grid one, for the people standing next to you.
"No internet. No repeater. Just the people around you." 🎙️