This is a short letter from the person writing the software. If you landed on this site from a search and want to know who is behind the thing you might pay for, that is what this post is for.
RigPlane is built by MSMSoft Technologies Consulting — a one-person shop that does the development, the hardware testing, the support email, and the boring infrastructure work behind the scenes. There is no remote team, no VC, no growth-team metrics, no waiting room of unpaid interns. It is one operator writing software for other operators, with a small budget for radios on the bench and a steady amount of patience for the parts of this work that take time.
Why this project exists
I started RigPlane because I wanted to operate my own station the way I thought about it in my head. I have radios on the desk and radios in the shack downstairs. I have a laptop in the office, a Mac at the kitchen table on weekends, and a small Linux box in the rack. None of the existing options let me move between those without re-learning a different UI, re-routing audio with a different tool, or accepting that one platform is the "real" one and the others are a hobby port.
Most of the existing software is a vendor app for one radio on one operating system, or a chain of three or four bridges glued together with audio cables and hope. The bridges work, but they are someone else's tool talking to someone else's tool. When something stops working — and something always stops working — it is hard to know which layer failed.
RigPlane is an attempt to collapse that stack into one piece of software that speaks directly to the radio, on every platform I personally use, with a single consistent operator console. The architecture exists in service of that goal, not the other way around. If a feature does not help the operator at the desk, it does not ship.
The open-core decision
RigPlane is split into two pieces, and the split is intentional.
The rigplane package on PyPI is the open-core library. It is MIT-licensed, lives at github.com/rigplane/rigplane-core, and contains the radio backends, the transport code, the protocol work, and a browser-based Web UI you can run on any platform that has Python. You can install it with pip install rigplane, read every line of source, file issues, and submit pull requests. Clubs, schools, and individual operators have a real, free, audit-able option to use forever.
RigPlane Pro is the packaged desktop application. It is the same radio-control engine wrapped in a native app that installs without you having to manage Python, audio routing, or config files. It costs money. It is not open source. That is the deal.
I chose this split because I think it is the most honest one. The protocol work and the radio support are infrastructure — they should be open, inspectable, and survive me if something happens to the company. The packaged operator product is a piece of paid work that funds the development of the open core. If you only ever want the library, you can have it and you owe me nothing. If you want the app, the app is for sale.
The road to Pro launch
Pro is targeting Q3 2026 for public launch. That is the current plan and I am holding the line on it.
Right now the desktop app runs on macOS, with Windows and Linux on the public roadmap. Beta access is invite-based; the trial form on this site collects interest and the desktop app can create trial access directly when invitations open. Production-grade radios today are the Icom IC-7610, Icom IC-7300, and Yaesu FTX-1 — those are the ones I run daily and that have CI coverage and real-hardware tests behind them. Other radios are supported through declarative profiles or community validation, with their status documented honestly at rigplane.dev.
If a radio is not on the supported list, it is because I have not personally tested it. I would rather say "not yet" than ship a backend I cannot stand behind on the air.
What to expect from the project
A few honest commitments.
The roadmap is public and the limitations are documented. Per-radio capability and known issues live in the technical documentation, not in marketing copy. If RigPlane does not do something you need, the docs should tell you that before you buy anything.
Releases ship on a steady cadence, not a heroic one. The open-core library and the Pro app release independently. Smaller, more frequent releases are more useful than rare, large ones — that is the cadence I am aiming for, and the GitHub Releases page is the source of truth.
Support is human and direct. Email goes to [email protected] and is read by me. Pro is a one-time desktop license — $79 USD at launch with a year of updates included — and is not a subscription. Refunds follow the Paddle policy described on /refund/.
Operator-first stays the rule. If a decision is good for the operator but inconvenient for me, the operator wins. If a decision is convenient for me but bad for the operator, the decision is wrong and I rewrite it. The whole point of doing this as a small, independent shop is that there is nobody to overrule that rule.
If you have read this far, thank you. The best way to follow the project is the GitHub Releases page or the trial signup at /trial/. The next post will be about something more technical — this one was the introduction.
— MSMSoft, 2026-05-19
Icom and Yaesu are trademarks of their respective owners and are referenced here only to describe compatibility.
Last reviewed 2026-05-19.