The Amateur Repeater Directory (ARD) exists to make repeater information freely available, openly verifiable, and truly community-maintained. Fully open source and hosted on GitHub, ARD is a grassroots alternative to closed and proprietary systems. We believe amateur radio works best when its infrastructure is transparent and accessible to everyone. Whether you're programming your first handheld or chasing distant signals from a mountaintop, ARD provides a trustworthy foundation of data — and an invitation to contribute, explore, and build the future with us.
ARD was born from a personal mission: to reach out further and further. Using real elevation and line-of-sight terrain data, ARD scans a full 360° from your location, surfacing repeaters you may never have known were reachable. You might search within 60 miles and discover a repeater 180 miles away, made possible not by guesswork, but by physics. It's a new kind of way — and it makes ham radio more exciting, more accessible, and more fun.
You can also mark yourself online on a given repeater, visible to others in real time. Our live activity map gives a nationwide view of active systems — not just where repeaters are, but where conversations are happening. You can instantly see which repeaters are alive, and who’s on them.
Technically, ARD is extremely lightweight, fast, and technology-agnostic. It’s built using pure HTML, JavaScript, and Bootstrap — no frameworks, no server requirements. It’s responsive and elegant on phones, tablets, and desktops alike. And because it’s so lightweight and open, anyone can contribute — even if you're new to software. The barrier to entry is low, and the possibilities are wide open.
What truly sets ARD apart isn’t just the open data — it’s the tools and spirit we’re building around it. Our mission isn’t simply to make a better directory, but to spark innovation across amateur radio. We want to enable others to take ARD further: to experiment, remix, and reimagine what’s possible with modern, accessible tools.
And we’re just getting started. We’re actively exploring integration with Meshtastic and other experimental RF technologies to feed live data into the ARD ecosystem, and we're not taking mesh nodes, but Repeater usage. The tools are open. The data is yours. The next leap in ham radio might just come from you.
