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Getting Started

Hamtrax is a modern, offline-first ham radio toolkit available on the web at hamtrax.com and as a native app for iOS and Android. Whether you're chasing POTA activations or just logging your daily QSOs, Hamtrax gives you one place to do it all.

The app offers a free tier with core features, and optional premium plans are available in Settings > Plans. As a best practice, back up your logs externally by exporting to an ADIF file regularly (see Exporting Contacts) so you always have a portable copy of your work.

Look Around Before You Sign Up​

You don't need an account to see Hamtrax working. Signed out, hamtrax.com opens on five tabs — Home, Hunt, Activate, DX, and Repeaters — and the last four are the same surfaces signed-in operators use:

  • Hunt — the live POTA spot list beside the world map, filters and all. Hamtrax reads your country from your browser language, so parks and distances are roughly right before you've told it anything about yourself.
  • Activate — the activation map, so you can see the parks you'd be operating from.
  • DX — the live DX cluster feed, each station flagged with its country on the world map, under a line explaining what DX chasing is if the term is new to you.
  • Repeaters — the repeater directory: it starts with repeaters within 50 miles of Chicago, IL, nearest first, beside the same map. Search by area sits in the top card, with Use my location directly beneath it and the repeater explanation below both. Nothing requests your device location until you tap that button, and the result is only a session browse center. Tap any repeater for its offset, access tone, mode, and distance.

Browse, filter, and open any spot's details for as long as you like. Logging a contact is the one thing that asks you to create an account — a QSO needs a logbook to land in. A link that points at a program opens the matching tab either way, so a shared hamtrax.com/#/programs/dx/hunt lands on DX whether the person opening it has an account or not.

Creating Your Account​

Getting started takes about 30 seconds:

  1. Open hamtrax.com in any modern browser, or launch the iOS or Android app.
  2. Tap Sign Up in the top-right header, Import My Contacts on the home screen, or Create Free Account when Hamtrax asks you to sign in for a feature.
  3. Choose Continue with Email. On the web and Android, you can also sign up with Google.
  4. If you chose email, enter your email and password, confirm the password, and press Continue. The button says Creating account… while Hamtrax securely creates the account. Google sign-up uses Google's web popup or Android account chooser instead.
  5. Enter your callsign when prompted. Hamtrax verifies it against the international license databases and uses it to personalize your experience and pull your station info — Continue unlocks once your callsign is found. If you don't have one yet, or the lookup can't find yours, choose I don't have a callsign yet to skip for now and add it later in Settings → Account (logging contacts requires a callsign). If your call is active but can't be found, see Hamtrax Can't Find My Callsign.
  6. Confirm your name and country, accept the Terms and Privacy Policy, and choose Create Account.

[SCREENSHOT: Sign-up screen with email and Google options]

Signing In​

Coming back to an existing account works a little differently depending on where you are:

  • Web and Android — one form: Google, or your email and password together.
  • iOS — email first, then Hamtrax decides. If your account has a password, it asks for it. If it doesn't (you signed up with Google, or you've used this before), it emails you a secure one-tap sign-in link instead. There's no Google button in the iOS app; use the same email you signed up with and you'll land in the same account.

Forgot your password? Tap Forgot password? — it's on the first sign-in screen everywhere: under the password box on the web and Android, under the email box on iPhone. It also appears inside the red message if a sign-in attempt fails, already filled in with the email you just typed. See I Can't Sign In if the reset email doesn't get you back in.

tip

You can update your callsign later from Settings > Account if it changes. The first time you set it, Hamtrax also does a one-time background import of your recent public POTA hunter contacts — they appear in your logbook a minute or two later.

Your First Contact -- The Guided Walkthrough​

The first time you open the Parks on the Air view, Hamtrax greets you with a short guided walkthrough that teaches the shape of the app: you make contacts in Hunting (or Activating), and the Logbook keeps every one of them -- filed automatically, with its story attached. It's a two-chapter tour -- Log it, then Keep it -- built around a synthetic practice activator so your first contact never touches your real log.

  • You'll hunt the practice activator, tap Contacted, and watch the contact get filed for you -- then land in your Logbook to see it already sorted into this month's hunting folder.
  • The practice activator is clearly marked and never confused with a real one, and the contact you log against it is cleaned up automatically -- it never stays in your logbook.
  • The tour finishes by dropping you on the live hunting list, ready to work a real activator.
  • You can replay the walkthrough anytime from Settings > Help.

This is the fastest way to learn how logging and organizing work together, so we recommend running through it once before chasing your first real activator.

Finish Setting Up Hamtrax​

The walkthrough always appears first. After it is finished or dismissed, the colorful Get Started checklist slides down below the app header when setup tasks remain. It starts at 17% because creating your account is already complete:

  • Create your account.
  • Import at least one contact through Hamtrax's importer.
  • Log a real hunted POTA contact directly in Hamtrax.
  • Create a radio profile.
  • Create an antenna profile.
  • Tap Share on a generated contact map.

Tap any milestone dot or its label for short, exact instructions and a button that takes you to the right place. Tasks can be completed in any order, and the percentage bar fills as soon as Hamtrax records each milestone. Its six dots sit on evenly spaced completion points, ending at the bar's right edge. When the origami fill reaches that final circle, it gives a short radiant bounce before the visible banner yields or the Settings checklist collapses. The completed dot slides left to join everything else you have finished, so the checklist always reads as what you have earned followed by what is left. A task you have already done is never stranded behind one you have not.

The X permanently hides only the floating checklist. The same checklist stays available at the top of Settings > Account, expanded while tasks remain and collapsed after all six are complete.

A Quick Tour​

Hamtrax is organized around a sidebar navigation with several main sections.

The search box at the top of the sidebar finds more than callsigns — click into it and the dropdown opens on the three things it can search, each tab introducing what it looks up:

  • Callsigns — look up any operator's name, location, license class, and grid, then select the result to open their public callsign dossier. When available, it adds licence dates, local time, QSL manager, current POTA/DX spots, receptions from the last hour on RBN and PSK Reporter, and their public POTA hunter total plus latest 25 hunter contacts. Each section or service group fills in independently, so one unavailable network does not erase the rest.
  • Parks — find any POTA park by name or reference, and start an activation there. With an activation already open those buttons are greyed out until you finish it.
  • Activators — see whether a callsign is on the air at a park right now, and add the contact to a hunting folder in one tap.

After you've typed at least three characters, Hamtrax checks all three categories together. A small red dot appears to the left of every category label with matches, so you can jump directly to results without leaving what you're currently doing. The callsign dossier is membership-neutral and public-data-only: it never shows a street address, ZIP code, exact coordinates, whether the operator uses Hamtrax, a Showcase prompt, or private QRZ/POTA logbooks, LoTW, or N1MM records.

Home​

Your launch pad. The Home tab opens with a hero scene and tagline. On desktop, tablet, and phone browsers, the POTA phone appears immediately, showing the same live-hunting screenshot that opens Anatomy of Hamtrax — a still image that paints instantly, with no video to buffer. Your first wheel gesture, vertical swipe, or Arrow/Page/Space key now snaps the hero directly to POTA All the Time, the first centered chapter. The reverse gesture returns directly to the hero. You can also click or tap the visible phone at any stop to move one section forward; rapid repeats while that move is settling stay with the same transition, so no chapter is skipped.

Each gesture moves exactly one chapter forward or backward through five real app screens in Anatomy of Hamtrax, covering live hunting data, the global POTA map, park details, quick activation logging, and organized logbooks. Realistic planets and stars fade in above the green prairie as the first chapter arrives. The full backdrop stays pinned throughout all five chapters and the next See Live Data section. There, three illustrated cards open POTA hunting, DX, or Repeaters; the phone has released, while the landscape fades only as you continue toward the National Parks section.

A horizontal five-dot row directly below the active chapter title shows your place in the sequence, widening the current chapter into a gold marker. Desktop and large tablets use a crisp side-by-side layout with each title aligned to the phone's upper third. On phones, the direct Hero-to-POTA handoff moves the phone upward and grows it into the left-anchored Anatomy composition, with each chapter title and progress row settling just above the device and each guided callout in a compact rounded card to its right. Every gold leader begins outside its feature ring, leaves the screenshot to the right, and stops before the card with a visible gap. Chapter titles and callouts stay clear of one another, fade in only as their chapter approaches center, become fully visible at rest, then disappear between chapters. Reduced-motion mode switches the celestial-prairie backdrop, screen, title, callout, and progress marker instantly without the phone breath. The final step releases cleanly into the POTA/DX/Repeaters chooser; native scrolling then continues into the National Park Foundation support pledge, followed by daily improvements, a Create Account button, and four explainers: What is HAM radio, What is POTA, What is DX chasing, and What are repeaters. The iOS App Store and Google Play download badges appear again immediately after the final explainer.

[SCREENSHOT: Home tab hero scene]

Log​

Your logbook. Every QSO you make is stored here, organized into automatic monthly folders for program-qualified POTA, DX, and Repeaters Hunt contacts, per-activation folders when you operate from a park, or a custom folder you choose for ordinary and unclaimed contacts. You can also import contacts, and download any folder as a file.

Parks on the Air​

A collapsible sidebar group holding the three POTA entry points — Hunting, Activate, and Park Explorer. Open Hunting to browse live POTA activations on an interactive map. This is where you go to find stations to work. On the iOS app with an FT8-capable radio connection (currently IC-705 → Direct Wi-Fi), an FT8 Auto-Hunt card here works matching FT8 activators for you, hands-free, through the radio.

[SCREENSHOT: Parks on the Air view with map showing live spots]

Activate​

The second entry in the Parks on the Air group: start your own POTA activation. Opening the setup does not request your location. Tap Find Nearest when you want Hamtrax to request a fresh device location and save it to your shared location preferences. With a blank park field, Hamtrax selects the closest park only when you're within 0.5 miles; otherwise it opens the nearby-parks list so you can choose. Manual park search remains available if you deny location permission. Once you choose a park, Hamtrax automates folder creation, optional spot posting, and contact logging so you can stay on the mic instead of the keyboard. The Hunt tab's Hunting from a park? quick start uses the same explicit setup without leaving the hunt list.

Park Explorer​

The third entry in the Parks on the Air group: the clustered world map of every POTA park, with nothing to start and nothing to commit to. If Hamtrax already has a real location from your selected callsign, device GPS, or manual method, the opening map frames you and the three closest parks without requesting a fresh fix; otherwise it keeps the world view. Below the map panel's header sits the same nearest-first list the Repeaters tab uses — every park within 50 miles with its name, distance, and a green Activated badge only when your Logbook has a validated activation for that park. Never-activated parks carry no status badge. Its main row divides into equal Park reference / Region / Photos sections, with the first two borderless and the optional photo stack slightly offset in the right section. The footer starts with a yellow Popular Park badge when applicable, places Activated directly after it, and keeps distance at the far right. One Search for parks box in the header card takes a city, an area, or a park's name or reference: results wearing a green pine are parks (the map flies there and opens the details), results wearing a white map are places (the whole list re-centers there). A mouse click or list row opens park details directly; on touch, a map pin first opens the shared card and its gold see details row. The detail view shows the park's photo, weather, and activation history. Activate Here hands the park to activation setup when browsing turns into a plan (greyed out while an activation is already open). See Park Explorer.

DX Chasing​

A flat sidebar entry beside the Parks on the Air group, and the second activity program Hamtrax installs: live spots from the worldwide DX cluster, each flagged with its country, and one-tap logging into DX monthly folders. Where POTA hunting is about parks, this is about countries — DXCC entities from the official ADIF list. See DX Chasing.

Repeaters​

A second flat sidebar entry, and the third activity program Hamtrax installs. Where POTA hunting is about parks and DX is about countries, this one is about repeaters — the ones within reach of where you are. There is no live feed to watch — Hamtrax ships the whole repeater directory with the app and keeps it on your device, so the list works the same on a mountain with no bars as it does at home.

Open it and you get the repeaters within 50 miles, nearest first, with the same map beside the list — measured from your saved location when signed in, and from Chicago, IL on the signed-out public page. There, Search by area and Use my location live together in the introductory card; either one replaces the public starting center for the session without touching a saved location or contact. Each row places the color-coded mode before the callsign in its header, then leaves a small gap before pairing a segmented Receive frequency — using that same mode color — with the calculated Transmit frequency in matching neutral cells. The published offset is centered below it, with any access tone centered immediately underneath, followed by the city, distance, and a NEW or Worked badge saying whether that repeater is already in your log; Log closes the row at bottom-right when logging is available. Search 150 miles widens the ring when your corner of the world is quiet, and Search by area re-centers the whole list on any town you name — for scouting a campsite before you leave, without touching your own saved location. Log hands the repeater's reference, frequency, and mode straight to the contact card, so logging a repeater QSO is a callsign and a tap — except while a POTA activation is running, when the logging controls step aside because POTA doesn't count repeater contacts toward an activation. There is no Activate entry — Repeaters is a hunting program only. See Repeaters.

Showcase​

Your ham radio identity at a glance — your equipment, your social links, and a card for each activity program you use, with your Parks on the Air activations and hunting inside the Parks on the Air card.

[SCREENSHOT: Showcase tab with activations]

Tools​

A collapsible sidebar section with two kinds of utilities. PSK Reporter and Reverse Beacon Network open as full pages for checking recent FT8 or CW reception on a receiver map and report list. Band Plan, Solar, CW Training, Library (Phonetic, Morse, Q-Codes, Etiquette, Frequencies), and Hamtrax CLI open as overlay panels so you can use them alongside any tab. CW Training keeps sending listening-only practice while its panel is minimized.

Feedback​

Its own sidebar row, just below Tools — report a bug or share an idea. It opens the in-app feedback form as a floating panel, so whatever you were doing stays on screen behind it. The small bug button at the bottom of the sidebar opens the same form.

info

All sections are available in the web app today.

Local-First Logging​

Hamtrax is built local-first. Core logbook actions like logging a QSO and viewing already-cached activity data work without an internet connection. Cloud acceptance still happens when the device reconnects:

  • Local storage comes first. Contact commands and app data are saved to your browser's local database (IndexedDB) the moment you create them. QSO entry does not wait for a server round-trip.
  • Cloud sync happens in the background. When you have a connection, Hamtrax automatically sends pending work to the cloud (Firestore). Accepted changes need no sync button.
  • You can keep logging in the field. If you lose cell signal mid-activation, keep logging. Each command remains on that device while it waits for the cloud. If the cloud permanently rejects one after reconnecting, Hamtrax shows a warning notification and the Logbook keeps it under Needs Filing with a plain outcome, reason, and next step instead of treating it as synced or exposing an internal id.
  • A safety pause keeps your place. Heavy logging or importing can pause at a cloud safety reset. The device keeps the exact command and resumes without duplicating it; a non-resetting emergency account hold waits for support review instead of retrying forever.
  • Recovery stays local until accepted. A Needs Filing item survives sign-out on that device, but it is not cloud-backed or available on another device yet. Only a new contact rejected for folder hygiene can be refiled through Choose folder; a contact-limit rejection offers View plans, while rejected edits and other failed deletes remain review-only. A delete for a contact already absent is complete and creates no review item.
  • Cached data for browsing. Activity data, maps, and reference lists you've previously loaded are cached so you can browse them offline.

This makes Hamtrax especially useful for portable operations -- POTA activations or anywhere connectivity is unreliable.

What's Next?​

You're all set. Here are some good places to go from here:

  • Logging Overview -- Learn how to log QSOs and manage your logbook.
  • Importing Your Log -- Bring in your existing contacts from other logging software.
  • Hunting -- Explore live spots, activations, and the real-time map.
  • Your Showcase -- Set up your public operator showcase, equipment, and social links.