Glossary
Terms used throughout this guide.
ADIF — Amateur Data Interchange Format. The standard text format for ham radio logbooks. Wait and Pounce reads your ADIF log to know what you've worked and writes its own QSOs to an ADIF backup.
Band — An amateur frequency range (160m … 3cm). All targets in Wait and Pounce are configured per band.
CQ Zone — One of 40 worldwide zones defined by CQ magazine, used for awards (WAZ) and contests. You can target whole zones.
CTY / cty.xml — Country-data files (from Club Log and country-files.com) that map callsign prefixes to DXCC entities, CQ/ITU zones and coordinates.
Confirmed — A QSO that has a positive QSL (LoTW, paper, or eQSL). Distinct from merely worked.
DXCC — DX Century Club. The ARRL award for working 100+ "entities" (countries). An entity is one DXCC unit.
DX Marathon — The CQ award for working as many DXCC entities and zones as possible within a calendar year. Wait and Pounce can auto-hunt needed entities.
FT8 / FT4 — Weak-signal digital modes by Joe Taylor et al., decoded by WSJT-X / JTDX. FT8 uses 15-second transmit periods, FT4 uses ~6-second periods.
Fox/Hound, SuperFox — Special FT8 modes for DXpeditions where a "fox" works many "hounds" efficiently. Affects the TX frequency window used by the gap finder.
Gap Finder / Offset Updater — The feature that moves your TX audio offset to a clear slot before replying.
Grid (Maidenhead locator) — A compact geographic code (e.g. JN18). Grid-chasing is a popular award pursuit.
JTDX — A fork of WSJT-X popular for weak-signal DX. Notable for a Log-QSO confirmation prompt that Wait and Pounce can auto-click.
LoTW — Logbook of The World, ARRL's online confirmation service. Wait and Pounce uploads via TQSL and downloads confirmations.
Master / Slave — When you run several cooperating copies of the program, the main copy talks to WSJT-X and keys the radio, while extra copies mirror its settings and stay receive-only. See Running Several Instances.
Pounce — To quickly reply to a wanted station the instant it decodes — the core action this app automates.
QSO — A two-way radio contact.
RR73 / RRR / 73 — FT8 acknowledgement messages. RR73/RRR confirm receipt; 73 is "best regards" / end of QSO. Wait and Pounce uses these to detect a completed contact.
SNR / Report — Signal-to-noise ratio in dB, the "report" exchanged in FT8 (e.g. −12).
TQSL — ARRL's signing/uploading tool for LoTW. Required for LoTW uploads.
UDP — The network protocol WSJT-X uses to broadcast decodes and accept reply requests (default port 2237).
Watchdog — The mechanism that stops the app calling a station forever, temporarily excluding it after a set number of attempts.
WkB4 (Worked Before) — Whether you've already worked a callsign on a band (any year). Controls whether the engine will re-work it.
WSJT-X — The original weak-signal software by K1JT that Wait and Pounce works alongside.