On Thursday 29th January 2026 a simple notice appeared on the HamClock home page.
I’ve worked with Elwood Downey, WB0OEW very closely on HamClock over the last couple of years and we’d become good friends. I emailed him straight away using a different address to the one he posts online and I received an instant reply to say that Elwood has passed away.
What will happen?
I’m assuming that some time in June, the backend server that hosts HamClock will go offline. Because so much of the data that is displayed on HamClock comes from its own server, most things will stop working very quickly.
Firstly, Live Spots and the On The Air pane will go to zero. The solar data displays will gradually clear and show an error. Within ten minutes or so, the map display will fail as it won’t be able to download. Even the basic country map will fail and a blue bar will appear across the display saying it can’t download.
The contest and dxpedition panes will stop getting updates. They may last a little longer.
The DXCluster pane is one of the few that relies on a different source for its feed. This will continue to work, but without a map to show the spots on, it’ll be basically useless.
I’m going to miss my friend Elwood. Towards the end of last year, he moved house so all his development kit was packed away but up until then, we used to email regularly. Mainly talking about HamClock and what else we could do with it, but often about other stuff, including other projects he was working on. I had nothing to do with the actual programming of HamClock but Elwood would take on board suggestions I and others made, and then between us, we’d thrash it out via beta versions of HamClock, tweaking and adjusting to give the best possible user experience. He’d add something, I’d suggest how to make it work better and between us, I think we ended up with a superb piece of software.
I’ll miss the ability to walk into the shack, switch the screen on and at a single glance, see how the bands are performing in real time, noticing any new band/mode slots that are currently on air and seeing any DXPeditions that are live. Being able to have easy access to VOACAP specific predictions or general propagation prediction maps during contests. The whole thing has become an essential tool and there’s nothing that even comes close to replace it with.
Over the next few days, I’ll be removing the HamClock content from this site, there’s no need for build instructions any more and there won’t be any need for the other guides when it all goes off in June.
Goodbye Elwood.
Update – 31st January 2026
I’ve had a lot of people contact me and there’s been a lot of social media postings about this. There seem to be a few options going ahead. The first is to try and get access to the server and I’ll be discussing this with someone else close to Elwood soon. The next option is to start again with a new version of HamClock and I’m already seeing progress pictures of many different versions.
However, assuming that server access can’t be obtained, I think the best option is to try and reverse engineer the data that comes out from the server to each HamClock to try and reproduce that somehow. If that’s possible, then the next stage would be to try and build some sort of redundancy around that, so that HamClocks aren’t reliant on a single source. If you’re already working on this, please contact me (my details are on my qrz page) so that we can try and tie everyone together and not have multiple teams working on the same thing.
This is the project I favour: https://github.com/BrianWilkinsFL/open-hamclock-backend and I encourage anyone working on a similar attempt to contact Brian.
I’ve changed the subject of this blog entry to include a ? at the end. Hopefully this won’t be the end.
*** Please read the comments, including my long reply below ***
Well. I’m very sorry to hear this as he will be definitely missed. Is there anything we can do to save Ham Clock?
There are two priorities, the first is ongoing behind the scenes and the second is to try and reverse engineer the output from the HamClock server to try and reproduce it. I’m fully behind the attempt here: https://github.com/BrianWilkinsFL/open-hamclock-backend and would encourage anyone working on the same to contact Brian so they can all work together.
So sorry to hear he is a silent key h c was a great help in shack is it possible for back end server to be moved somewhere else
Anything we can do or host in our area of Texas to save the project? Or it it locked away?
Thanks for sharing your experiences and interactions with Elwood. I have enjoyed using hamclock and will, as you stated miss having that display in my shack when I start up.
73
Mark
AC8BE
https://distributive.network/ can help the server issue. They have a SETI like technology that could easily be used by a ham network and the Ham Clock devs. Any way to reach the devs at Ham Clock to review this potential solution? Thx
very very sad. sorry
Please reconsider removing the content and instead just add a note that you’re keeping it online for archival purposes. It’s tragedy when we lose information. If you can’t keep the information on your site then please archive the relevant information to the Wayback Machine so that the information persists even if your site does not.
So sorry to hear this news. RIP Elwood Sir.
I never spoke with him directly but obviously a great guy !
Is there anything we can do to save hamclock ?
Relocate servers, provide hosting bandwidth, etc ??
I am so sorry to hear of the death of Mr Downey. His work in this will be remembered.
My question is is there any way to take over the HamClock servers as a legacy for what was created?
I too am sorry to hear about this potential situation. I hope that the Ham community can find a solution and keep the Hamclock server up. I just purchased a Inovato Hamclock in December of last year and I SURE DON’T want to cease from using it come June…
Is OpenHamClock (https://github.com/accius/openhamclock) legit? The page says it is a “spiritual successor to the beloved HamClock”.
There are many attempts being made to create a successor to HamClock and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing even close yet. Some of them are very pretty, but simply confusing to look at. HamClock has a very basic (some say ‘dated’) display which is very easy to just glance at and get an instant idea of conditions. I’ve not seen any attempts to reproduce that yet.
Also, nothing I’ve seen from any of the ‘new’ versions is doing anything other than very basic functionality. I know it’s early, but there’s a lot more to HamClock than what you see on screen. For example, if you were to hover over a band in the Live Spots pane, the map instantly shows a series of concentric red circles over the best DX on that band and the info box in the top left corner of the map expands showing the DX callsign and their square. The spotter callsign, the mode, the frequency, the local time at the DX location, the age of the spot, the beam heading, distance, local temperature and the local weather.
It’s the same with the dxcluster if you hover over a station.
Integration with the dxcluster is incredibly tight. When HamClock connects to a cluster, it’s not just a connect command. It examines the prompt that the cluster node sends back, and if it’s asking for the user to set their location, etc, then it does so. If it’s not prompted, it doesn’t send it.
There are watch lists, with potentially complicated filters that can be built into the cluster and POTA/SOTA displays. I use them with an uploaded copy of my log which highlights new band/mode slots that I need to work. These watch lists can also be used as basic filters for modes and bands etc that one doesn’t want to see.
The VOACAP pane can be clicked in to show full predictions for each band, again, it’s not just a single use thing.
If DRAP or Aurora chances go above a certain frequency/percentage respectively, the maps can be automatically switched in and out of the circulation.
And I’m touching the surface here. Some of the changes added in the last couple of years have been through over 50 different revisions in testing, making sure they work properly, don’t break other things and give the best possible user experience.
What we need is HamClock working past June, not fifty different ‘new HamClocks’.
I stress again, the best option is to try and reverse engineer the information coming out from the HamClock server. Brian is working on this here and I really encourage anyone with any appropriate skills to get in touch with him and assist him
https://github.com/BrianWilkinsFL/open-hamclock-backend
Sorry Jeff, I’ve got a bit carried away here. When it comes to HamClock, I’m so enthusiastic that I tend to just go on and on. And I miss Elwood.
Thanks for this great writeup. I found your website today while searching on what’s happening with HamClock. I might be able to help but my coding’s a little rusty!
Your point above “What we need is HamClock working past June, not fifty different ‘new HamClocks’” is well taken. To that end, IMO getting whatever momentum is ‘out there’ focused quickly on a single solution is important. May I suggest a press release/email/whatever to entities like ARRL, RSGB, DXWorld, etc – places with large cohorts of HamClock users – asking them for help getting the word out via announcements on their websites pointing people here to your website. Just a thought. Good luck!
Sorry I guess I meant to say point people to Brian’s repository, not here 🙂 I just took a look at his GitHub page above and he’s got a pretty good description of things.