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Activating

Parks on the Air brings the outdoors and ham radio together. The Activate tab is where you go on the air yourself: pick one of 90,000+ catalog parks, tap Start, and Hamtrax handles the folder creation, spotting, and logging bookkeeping while you stay on the mic. New to the activator/hunter distinction? See Activating vs. Hunting.

[SCREENSHOT: Activate tab setup view with the nearest park auto-filled and equipment fields ready]

Starting an Activation​

Ready to go portable? Hamtrax walks you through setup and handles the bookkeeping while you operate.

  1. Open the Activate tab, or tap Activate Here from any park's detail modal in the Hunt Contacts tab.
  2. Nearest-park auto-fill -- When the setup screen opens, Hamtrax requests your device location (a one-time permission prompt the first time; silent afterward). If you're within about half a mile of a park, it auto-fills that park into the Park field for you. Not the right one? Just search by name or reference, or tap Find Nearest to browse other nearby parks.
  3. You can also tap any park pin on the map to select it -- park pins remain interactive during setup and open the Park Detail modal with an Activate Here button.
  4. Enter the Freq (MHz), mode, power, and equipment profile (radio and antenna from your Rig Manager profiles), then tap Start. The Start button stays disabled until you're signed in with a callsign, have picked a recognized POTA park, and have entered a valid frequency.

Hamtrax saves the selected park's coordinates into the activation session, so the live and resumed activation map anchors itself to the park you are activating.

If You Can't Find Your Park​

Most of the time GPS auto-detect or a quick search by name or reference (e.g. K-0001 or Pottawatomie) lands on the right park -- the catalog covers 90,000+ parks and Hamtrax keeps it synced with POTA automatically (new parks typically appear within about an hour of POTA publishing them, and new accounts start with the current list). A missing match is almost always a typo, so double-check the reference or try searching by name instead of code. If a park POTA added within the last hour hasn't appeared yet, the Settings → POTA Park Database card shows when an update is available and can pull it on the spot.

warning

Custom activation parks are not supported. Starting an activation requires a recognized POTA park from the catalog. This keeps the activation folder tied to the official park reference, coordinates, stats, and ADIF fields instead of creating an incomplete free-text record.

Once running, all contacts you log are saved to an auto-created folder named after the standard ADIF/POTA convention callsign@reference-YYYYMMDD (e.g., "KA8H@K-1515-20201127"). The Logbook displays the park name in place of the raw folder name when available. You don't need to create or manage this folder -- it happens automatically.

tip

The Auto-spot toggle (enabled by default) posts a spot to POTA.app as soon as your activation begins, so hunters can find you right away. Both auto-spots and manual self-spots use the same comment format: your Hamtrax short link, radio/power, and antenna when available -- e.g., hamtrax.com/101 | Xiegu 6100 10W | EFHW. Your short link leads the comment, so anyone browsing the POTA spots page is one tap from your public showcase.

Logging Contacts During an Activation​

Once your activation is running, the QSO log form appears on the map panel. For each contact, enter:

  • Callsign -- Auto-looked up against POTA spots and callsign databases. On a phone, a 0–9 key row floats directly above the on-screen keyboard while this field is focused, so the digits in a call like W1AW never require switching to the number layout
  • Frequency and mode -- Pre-filled from your activation settings; mode auto-updates when you change frequency
  • Signal reports (sent and received) -- Picker defaults to the mode's format (59 for phone, 599 for CW and other RST modes), lets you step every digit up or down (readability, strength, and tone in RST modes), and reshapes automatically when you change mode
  • Equipment -- Radio and antenna selection (from your Rig Manager profiles)
  • Notes -- Optional, toggled with a checkbox

As contacts land, the activation map draws QSO arcs from logged contact markers back to your activation park anchor. The same anchor owns the self/user glyph, camera, and recenter target. Logged-contact markers use the same rich popup as the Logbook map, including country flag, country/grid, callsign, operator name, frequency, mode, and date when available. Stations that only spotted you stay marker-only until you log them as contacts.

Progress Toward a Valid Activation​

As soon as you log your first contact, a N CONTACTS count appears above the list, and the gold line beside it doubles as a progress bar toward a valid activation. The gold fill grows with every contact you log and reaches full at 10 -- the minimum for a valid activation. The moment your tenth contact lands, the line flashes and a brief golden sweep crosses the screen to mark the milestone. Resuming an activation that already has 10 or more contacts simply shows a full bar -- the celebration only plays the once, as you cross the line.

Park-to-Park Detection​

When you enter a callsign, Hamtrax checks cached POTA spots from the last 30 minutes. If the other station is also at a park, the P2P (Park to Park) indicator appears automatically and their park reference fills in. This data is included in the ADIF export.

Respot on Frequency Change​

If you change frequency during your activation, a Respot checkbox appears on the next QSO you log. Checking it updates your POTA.app spot with your new frequency.

Operating With Weak or No Signal​

Activations often happen where cell coverage is poor or absent. Hamtrax is built for this, but it's important to know that logging contacts and self-spotting behave differently when you're offline.

  • Logging contacts always works offline. Every QSO is saved to your device the instant you log it, and uploads to the cloud automatically once you're back in range. You can run an entire activation with no signal and lose nothing -- log normally and let it sync later.
  • Callsign lookups defer until you reconnect. If you're offline when you log a contact, Hamtrax flags it and fills in the operator's name, grid, and location automatically once connectivity returns.
  • Park-to-park detection still works offline. P2P matching reads from POTA spots already cached on your device (the last 30 minutes), so it doesn't need a live connection.
  • Self-spotting needs a live connection. Auto-spot and manual self-spots post to POTA.app in real time. They are not queued -- if you're offline or your signal drops, the spot simply doesn't go out, and Hamtrax doesn't retry it for you.
tip

On spotty signal, if a self-spot doesn't seem to land, tap the spot button again once you have a bar or two. Your contacts are never at risk -- only the live spot needs the connection, and re-spotting is safe to repeat.

Photos​

After logging contacts, you can attach photos directly to your activation folder using the inline gallery strip on the Logbook page. Tap the + button to upload photos from your device. Photos appear in a scrollable strip and are visible on your public showcase. See Folders & Labels for full details on folder media.

Editing Activation Contacts​

After an activation, you can edit or delete individual contacts from the Logbook page just like any other contact. However, because activation contacts are tied to your POTA submission, Hamtrax shows a warning dialog before you edit one. The warning reminds you that edits made in Hamtrax are not automatically synced to the POTA website -- you must also update your log on pota.app manually to keep both records in sync.

If you prefer not to see this warning every time, check "Hide this message in the future" in the dialog.

Two fields stay fixed when you edit an activation contact: the park and the date. Since every contact in an activation folder belongs to the same park and the same day, the edit form shows both as read-only with a banner explaining each lock (for example, "Park is locked to US-2325 for this activation."). Every other field is editable. See Locked fields in auto-folders for the full picture.

Resuming an Activation​

If you close the app or navigate away before ending your activation, the session remains open. To get back to it, open the Log tab and find the activation folder in the Activations tree. The folder displays a green Active badge in the folder list. Select it and tap the Resume Activation button at the top of the folder detail to jump directly back into your active logging session.

The Activate tab keeps the same list. Under In Progress you'll see every open activation with your newest one pinned to the top, and each row's ⋯ menu has a Resume action that jumps straight back into the session.

Ending an Activation​

When you're done operating, open the Finish tab. It walks you through closing out your activation and reporting it on the POTA website in two parts — adding the activation, then uploading your log:

If the activation does not have any callsigns yet, the Finish tab shows an orange reminder to log contacts before closing it out instead of the normal success card.

  1. Download your log file — grab the ADIF file of all logged contacts, named and formatted for POTA submission. You can always re-download it later from the activation folder in your Logbook.
  2. Add your activation at pota.app — from the pota.app menu, choose Add Activation and enter your park and activation date.
  3. Upload your log at pota.app — submit the ADIF file on the My Log Uploads page. An optional Auto-close on POTA.app toggle tells POTA you're off the air when you tap Finish Activation, so hunters stop calling.

Tap Finish Activation and Hamtrax finalizes the activation record. You can still add contacts and edit photos, links, and equipment later from the activation folder in your Logbook.

You can also finish an activation without opening it. On the Activate tab, open the ⋯ menu on its row in the In Progress list and choose Finish — this closes the activation so it's no longer in progress while keeping all its contacts and its folder, exactly like finishing from inside the session. (The same menu's Delete removes the activation and its contacts entirely, so reach for Finish whenever you just want to close one out.)

Importing a Past Activation​

If you have ADIF files from POTA activations you did before using Hamtrax, you can import them as complete activation records. In the Logbook tab, expand the Activations category and click the Import button. Hamtrax parses the ADIF file, detects the park reference, callsign, and date range, and creates the POTA activation folder and every matching QSO in one step.

The importer drops obviously-bad records (invalid dates, impossible times, oversized fields, garbled callsigns), collapses in-file duplicates, skips QSOs already in your logbook so re-importing the same file won't create duplicates, and warns you up front when QSOs in the file reference a different park or program than the one you're importing — so the resulting activation is clean. See Importing a single past activation for the full validation rules.

Bringing in a whole logbook instead of one activation? The general importer takes an ADIF or CSV file and auto-sorts every contact into the right folder — activations, monthly hunts, and everything else — skipping duplicates as it goes.

  • Hunting -- Find and work live POTA activators from the Hunt Contacts tab.
  • Folders & Labels -- How activation folders organize your contacts.
  • Importing Contacts -- Bring past activations and whole logbooks into Hamtrax.