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, optional spotting, and logging bookkeeping while you stay on the mic. (Hunting from inside a park instead? The Hunt panel's My Location picker includes a Hunting from a park? quick start beneath its three location choices, opening the same kind of activation without leaving the hunt list.) New to the activator/hunter distinction? See Activating vs. Hunting. Activating belongs to Parks on the Air alone: the other installed programs — DX Chasing and Repeaters — hunt only, so Activate always means a park.

[SCREENSHOT: Flat Start Activation form showing its title, My park, the numbered Frequency and Mode steps, Radio, Antenna, Spot, and Start, with a separate large Suggested Park card beneath it in the same panel, including park photography, activation count, a Popular Park badge, a collapsed See geography row, and Activate here]

Starting an Activation

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

1. Open Activate under the Parks on the Air group in the sidebar, tap Activate Here from any park's detail modal in the Parks on the Air tab or Park Explorer, or use the main search's Parks tab and tap Activate Here on a result. (Planning to hunt from your park rather than run a frequency? Open My Location on the Hunt panel and use Hunting from a park? beneath its three choices — no setup form.) A current-day From Park contact in the Logbook's global Add Contact form also offers Start Activation when no activation folder remains open; it opens this setup with the park prefilled and leaves the QSO draft intact for your return.
2. Find Nearest is opt-in -- Opening setup does not request your location. Tap Find Nearest when you want Hamtrax to request a fresh device fix (the first tap may show your device's permission prompt). If the My park field is blank and the closest park is within 0.5 miles, that one tap selects it. Otherwise, Hamtrax opens the nearby-parks list so you can choose. A lookup that can't finish — a stalled connection, a fix that never arrives — stops itself rather than sitting on Finding…, and the button comes back as took too long · Search again for another try. Manual search by name or reference always works, even if location access is denied or unavailable.
3. On this setup screen park pins remain interactive. A mouse click opens Park Detail directly; on touch, tapping selects the park and pins the shared straight dark card. Tap anywhere on that card — including its photo stack — or its corner icon to open the same modal with Activate Here. (The Hunting Location-picker shortcut has no map — there you search for the park yourself or tap Find Nearest for the same fresh-fix behavior. Just browsing parks with no activation in mind? That's what Park Explorer is for — its detail modals have the same Activate Here button, which lands right here with the park pre-filled.) Your location glyph begins at your known Hamtrax location. Once a recognized park is selected, it slides to that park's resolved location with a slow-fast-slow move and two radiant omnicolor beams firing in each cardinal direction. Only after the glyph arrives does the map fly to the park at its closest supported zoom. If only a grid square is available, the preview uses its center. The moved glyph becomes the one interactive park pin, so it still opens the park's details without covering a duplicate target. If a replacement search is left empty or unrecognized, the exact park selection is removed and the glyph first slides back; once it arrives, the camera returns to your known location at the normal overview zoom. This setup preview never replaces your saved location, and Reduce Motion completes each glyph move immediately so its camera change follows immediately without the beam effect. The card can show up to four different tiny photos of that park as a stack at its right edge. A pinned card loads them itself; a hover preview shows them only if another view has already loaded them this session.
4. The form opens with its title — with the default-collapsed What is a POTA activation? explainer beneath it when signed out — and runs top to bottom: My park, Frequency and Mode, Radio, Antenna, Spot, then Start, with a default-collapsed Where will my contacts be saved? row beneath the button when signed in. Search for My park first. Once Hamtrax recognizes a park, the query clears and a compact card directly beneath the search shows its full name and reference; tap that card for Park Detail, or type another search to replace it. Next, enter Frequency (MHz) and Mode in the two numbered steps, then optionally select Radio and Antenna. Spot, right after Antenna, has a Spot on start subtitle and inline switch that control whether Hamtrax posts an initial spot. Then tap Start. Radio and Antenna are your app-wide current equipment: anything selected in Hunt is already shown here, and a change here appears in Hunt and every new-contact form. They read Not set until you choose them; Hamtrax never silently picks the first profile. While signed out, Radio and Antenna instead open disposable demo editors: every field can be changed, but closing discards the draft and leaves the mock gear unchanged. Setup has no power field: Start records the watts saved on the radio you selected, and choosing a different radio — or editing that radio's Power on its card in the picker — changes the power the activation runs on. See Power. Start requires a recognized POTA park and a valid frequency; signed-in operators also need a saved callsign. If signed out, tapping Start asks you to sign in. (Equipment is optional. The Hunt panel's My Location shortcut needs only your callsign and a recognized park.)

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.

The Suggested Park card

A large Suggested Park card sits directly beneath the setup form in the same panel only while no recognized park is selected. It picks at random from the ten closest active parks within 50 miles of your already-resolved Hamtrax location — callsign, device, or manual, according to your selected location method — preferring one that has photos. Parks you have already activated are left out of that draw, so the card proposes somewhere you haven't been on the air. A park counts as activated when your Logbook holds a validated activation folder for it — the same signal behind Park Explorer's Activated badge — whether that activation is open, finished, or imported, and even if you never logged a contact in it. Hunting a station at a park does not count; you have to have activated it yourself. The draw is fresh each time, so the card offers somewhere different from session to session rather than the same closest park until you physically move. Photos are a preference, not a requirement, so where none of the ten has any it still suggests one of them. It reaches past the 50-mile radius to the ten nearest anywhere only when both are true — fewer than ten never-activated parks fall within 50 miles, and none of those few has photos. A short list on its own doesn't widen it, and missing photos on their own don't either, and the wider list leaves out your activated parks the same way. Only if nowhere in that worldwide reach is left unactivated will the card suggest a park you have already run, so that it always has something to show. Tap Activate here to fill that park into the form. You still review your setup and tap Start to begin. Once exact resolution confirms the selection, this large suggestion card disappears; the compact card beneath the search becomes the one selected-park confirmation.

The suggestion card shows the park's name and reference, its total activation count across all operators from POTA when available, and park photos when available. Parks in Hamtrax's popular set also carry a Popular Park badge, and any park Hamtrax has written up carries a See geography row you can open for its description — the same badge and row the park detail views show, rather than the description printed straight onto the card. See Popular Park and geography. Tap the card to open the same Park Detail modal used by the map, with the rest of the park's information.

While the suggestion is still being worked out, the card reads Finding…. If it is taking a while that becomes Still looking — this can take a moment on a slow connection, and if nothing has arrived after about thirty seconds the card stops claiming to be working: it says it couldn't finish finding a nearby park and offers Try Again. The search behind it is never cancelled, so an answer that arrives late still replaces the message on its own.

If a park or photo lookup fails — or the photo check runs out of time before it can settle the question — no park is suggested, and the card shows an unavailable message with the same Try Again button. A check that never finished can't prove that no nearby park has photos, so the card says so rather than falling back to a random park. Manual park search remains available in every one of these states.

Suggestions reuse your existing location without requesting a fresh GPS fix or changing the My park field automatically. Signed in, if Hamtrax has no resolved location yet, the card explains that a location is needed for a suggestion — it waits for your location settings to load before saying so, rather than flashing that message and changing its mind a moment later. Setting one in Settings → Preferences → Station gives the card something to measure from.

Signed out there is no account location to measure from, so the card measures from your approximate area — estimated from your internet connection for this visit only, and never saved. If no area can be found, the card shows one featured park instead of asking for something you can't give yet: Yellowstone National Park (US-0070), presented as an ordinary suggestion with its all-operator activation total, whatever photos, Popular Park badge or See geography row it carries, and Activate here. It's there to show what a suggestion looks like — sign in and set your location to get parks near you.

You can still search for any park manually in either case.

If You Can't Find Your Park

Most of the time Find Nearest or a quick search by name or reference (e.g. K-0001 or Pottawatomie) lands on the right park. Find Nearest is optional, so a location denial never blocks manual park search. The catalog covers 90,000+ parks; the Hamtrax cloud copy checks POTA about hourly, a new account opened online starts with the current list, and each signed-in device quietly downloads a newer local copy by default on its next online app open. A missing match is almost always a typo, so double-check the reference or try searching by name instead of code. And if you only notice the typo after you've started logging, it's correctable — see Fixing the Wrong Park. If a newly published park has not appeared yet, open Settings → Integrations → POTA Park Database. Auto-update parks database can be turned off account-wide, while Drop & refresh always pulls the latest dataset on this device; an opted-out or failed automatic update keeps the Settings reminder, shown at most once a week after an eligible stale check.

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"). YYYYMMDD is the UTC day the activation opened, so an activation started on July 22 local time can correctly be named July 23 after UTC has crossed midnight -- and an activation that runs through 0000 UTC keeps every contact in that one folder, name unchanged. POTA works the same way: a single submitted log file may contain more than one UTC day. The Logbook leaves that UTC folder name unchanged. When a recorded start time is available, the folder-tree date row shows the activation's local calendar date, start time, and timezone abbreviation; older date-only folders stay date-only. Hamtrax uses the activation park's timezone when possible, then your current Hamtrax location, and explicitly labels UTC if no local timezone can be derived. You don't need to create or manage this folder -- it happens automatically.

tip

The Spot row, with the subtitle Spot on start, is enabled by default for an ordinary Activate launch and posts a spot to POTA.app as soon as your activation begins, so hunters can find you right away. A launch from the Logbook's Add Contact → Start Activation action deliberately begins with Spot off; review the switch before Start if you want hunters notified.

Automatic start spots and manual self-spots use your Activation spot comment from Settings → Integrations → POTA. A hamtrax.com link leads by default; choose My showcase in the editor to use your assigned hamtrax.com/{shortcode} link. The complete comment is limited to 60 characters. Its Radio and Antenna pills add your current equipment ahead of your own text as Radio: … and Antenna: …, omitting empty values and their labels. The radio also carries the power you are running — e.g., hamtrax.com | Radio: 6100 10W Antenna: EFHW.

An activation started from the Hunt panel's My Location → Hunting from a park? shortcut has no Spot toggle and never posts a start spot -- a reverse activator hunts, and doesn't want POTA.app sending hunters their way. You can still spot yourself later by resuming the activation and using Spot Yourself.

Logging Contacts During an Activation

Once your activation is running, the Add Contact card appears on the Log tab: your gear behind the collapsible Radio / Antenna disclosure up top, then three rows -- callsign and their park, mode and frequency, and the signal report beside the Log Contact button. For each contact, enter:

• Callsign -- Auto-looked up against POTA spots and callsign databases. Editing the call immediately clears the previous station's name, location, and P2P park. If a lookup definitively misses, 3 or more characters show Callsign not found; 1 or 2 characters leave the description blank. Characters are evenly spaced and fixed-width, giving you clearer places to tap when you need to position the cursor and finish a call you heard in fragments. On touch devices, a small chevron sits on each side of the field -- tap ‹ or › to step the cursor one character left or right when a fingertip won't land between the right two characters. The cursor then stays exactly where you put it: uppercasing no longer bumps it to the end of the field mid-edit, and autocorrect, spell-check, and saved-value autofill stay off so nothing rewrites a call while you're typing it. 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 — on by default, and switchable off under Settings → Preferences → My Activations. This live Add Contact field is the only callsign input that uses the extra row.
• Their park -- The other station's park, right beside the callsign. Park-to-park detection fills it in automatically and pulses the field when the reference lands, and you can also type or search a park yourself for a hunter who's at a park without activating it. See Park-to-Park
• Mode -- Inferred from your current frequency and updates when you change it
• Frequency -- Pre-filled from your latest confirmed activation spot after a reload, falling back to the frequency you started with. An activation started from the hunt panel has neither, so the field simply starts empty
• Signal reports (sent and received) -- With Pre-fill perfect signal reports on (the default, in Settings → Preferences → Logbook), the picker starts at 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. Pick FT8, FT4, or another of the WSJT-X digital modes and the picker switches to a dB signal-to-noise report -- -15, +05 -- stepped as a signed tens digit (-3 to 3) and a ones digit. No dB value is perfect, so those modes always start unset and take the number you actually copied -- and the report's info tip says what to expect: a negative report is normal, and most contacts land between -20 and 0. Turn the setting off and both reports start unset for every mode -- the pill shows dim dashes, the picker shows ghosted digits labeled not set, and your first tap on a stepper makes the report real. POTA doesn't require signal reports, so an unset report simply saves nothing; each new contact starts unset again after a save
• Equipment -- Radio and Antenna, behind the Radio / Antenna disclosure at the top of the card. They are the same app-wide current selection shown in Hunt and new-contact forms; changing either here updates those surfaces and all future contacts. The card has no power field: Radio shows the selected radio's watts beside its name, and those watts are what the activation is running. Pick a different radio, or edit Power on a radio's card inside the picker, and the contacts you log next and your self-spot comment follow it. The disclosure starts expanded; collapse it when you'd rather keep the contact fields front and center

The Spot Yourself card sits directly below Add Contact and shares its frequency and mode. Change either value in one card and the other stays in sync, so you can post a manual spot without leaving the Log tab or re-entering your operating details.

Below both cards, contacts and spots appear together in one newest-first activity history. Every row uses the same two-line layout: a yellow QSO or blue Spot label and time first, then callsign, frequency, mode, and details. Contact rows carry an Edit/Delete menu; spot rows are informational -- to log a spotter as a contact, type their callsign into the Add Contact form. Choose All, Contacts, or Spots to focus the list, and tap Refresh whenever you want Hamtrax to check POTA for the latest spots.

Contacts With a Problem Are Shaded Red

If Hamtrax sees something wrong with a contact, that row is shaded red in the list and the reason is stated in red beneath its callsign, so you catch it while you're still at the park. Five things get flagged:

• a duplicate -- the same callsign already logged in this activation, on any frequency or mode
• a callsign that doesn't look valid
• a missing frequency
• a missing mode
• a time in the future

A missing signal report is deliberately not flagged -- POTA doesn't require one, so contacts logged with Pre-fill perfect signal reports turned off, or in an FT8-family mode that has no perfect report to pre-fill, stay clean rows.

Nothing is ever blocked mid-pileup -- your contact is logged either way, and a red row is a heads-up to fix when you get a breath. Use the row's ⋯ → Edit to correct it. The Finish tab counts the same issues, so the two never disagree -- though there you can also ignore an issue to finish anyway, which dismisses it from the banner while the row stays red.

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. 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.

Sessions that cross 0000 UTC

POTA counts those 10 contacts within a single UTC day:

"A successful activation requires a minimum of 10 QSOs from a park in the designated list within a single UTC day (Zulu day)."

-- POTA Rules

The progress bar counts your whole session. If your operating runs through 0000 UTC, the contacts either side of midnight score as two separate days -- 8 before and 6 after is zero valid activations, not one, even though the bar shows 14. Watch the clock when you're operating near the boundary and short of 10.

Your contacts all stay in one folder regardless; POTA works out the day split from the timestamps in the log you submit.

Milestone Celebrations

Four contact counts are worth marking, and each gets its own celebration across the screen while the progress line flashes in that milestone's colour:

• 10 contacts -- a valid activation -- one gold beam sweeps the screen from left to right
• 25 contacts -- on a roll -- two cyan beams cross, each sweeping the way the other doesn't
• 50 contacts -- a surge -- the edges of the screen beat twice in tangerine while a lit curtain falls from the top
• 100 contacts -- a century -- two purple shockwave rings expand from the middle of the screen

The bar itself only ever measures the run to a valid activation, so it stays full after 10; the milestones above it flash that full line rather than extending it.

Each milestone plays once, exactly as you cross it. Resuming an activation that already cleared a count shows a full bar and no celebration, and a jump that clears several counts at once plays only the highest -- never two celebrations at the same time. If your device prefers reduced motion, Hamtrax skips the celebrations entirely and the line simply fills.

Park-to-Park

Every contact has a Their park field beside the callsign, so a park-to-park contact is something you can see and edit -- not just something that happens invisibly.

• Detected for you. When you enter a callsign, Hamtrax checks cached activity spots from the last 30 minutes. If exactly one program and reference match the other station, that reference drops into Their park with a quick pulse and the P2P badge appears beside the field's label. If recent spots point to more than one identity, Hamtrax leaves the field blank so you can choose the one you actually worked. This is the Auto-detect Park to Park toggle in Settings → Preferences, on by default.
• Or entered by you. Plenty of hunters call you from a park they aren't activating, so they never appear in the spots. Tap Their park and the field slides wider for typing -- enter a reference like US-1234, or search by park name and pick from the suggestions, which lead with the park code since that's what you exchanged on the air. Only a real park reference commits -- pick a suggestion, press Enter, or tap away -- so a half-typed search can never land on your contact.

Left alone, the field shows the park compactly: the country code small and green beside the bare park number. Tap it and it returns to the plain editable US-1234 text. Editing the callsign clears the park along with the rest of the previous station's details, so a park never carries over from one contact to the next. Either way the reference is saved on the contact and included in the ADIF export (SIG / SIG_INFO).

note

A park Hamtrax detected proves the other station is spotted and on the air, so logging that contact also posts a courtesy park-to-park spot for them on POTA.app. A park you typed in does not -- Hamtrax won't announce a hunter who may not be activating.

P2P works from the other direction too: while this activation is in progress, POTA contacts you log from the Hunt panel file straight into this activation's folder as park-to-park QSOs — see Hunting From a Park for the reverse-activation strategy.

The other two programs answer the same question differently, and it is worth knowing before you sit down: DX contacts also file into this activation — as ordinary activation QSOs, not park-to-park, since the DX station isn't at a park — while repeater contacts stay out of it, because POTA doesn't count a contact made through a repeater. See What about DX and repeaters?.

Frequency-Change Warning

If you change frequency after this activation has been spotted, a red ≠ appears beside Freq whenever the field differs from the activation's latest spot. Open it to compare the two frequencies. Logging a contact never re-spots your activation automatically -- the courtesy spot a detected park-to-park contact posts announces the other station, not you. Use Spot Yourself below the form when you want hunters to see the new frequency. If the activation has no spots yet, no warning appears.

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 is local-first offline. Every QSO command is saved to your device the instant you log it, without waiting for a server round-trip. When you reconnect, cloud-accepted contacts upload automatically. If the cloud permanently rejects one, Hamtrax shows a warning notification and the contact remains on that device under Logbook → Needs Filing with a plain outcome, reason, and next step rather than an internal id or raw server message; it is not cloud-backed or available on another device until accepted.
• 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 works offline both ways. Detection reads POTA spots already cached on your device (the last 30 minutes), and the Their park search reads the on-device park catalog -- neither needs a connection. Only the courtesy P2P spot a detected contact posts for the other station needs one, and like self-spots it is not queued or retried.
• Self-spotting needs a live connection. The automatic start 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.
• Finishing works offline. The activation closes at once and syncs when you reconnect, so you can start your next park right away. Only the Auto-close on POTA.app notice needs signal at that moment.

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 QSO commands stay saved on this device while offline; after reconnecting, Hamtrax notifies you if the cloud permanently rejects one and keeps it under Needs Filing. Only the live spot needs a connection in real time, and re-spotting is safe to repeat.

Photos

After logging contacts, you can attach photos directly to your activation folder — use the + button on the Showcase tab during the activation, or Add photos in the folder's Logbook details panel afterwards. Select all your photos at once rather than one at a time; each activation folder holds up to 4 photos, and the add action hides once it is full. The Showcase tab lays them out in a row; Logbook details shows only attached thumbnails, without empty placeholder squares. Either way they are visible on your public showcase. See Folders & Labels for full details on folder media, accepted formats, and size limits.

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.

While a contact keeps an activation folder selected, its matching park, accepted session date, and your operating location stay fixed. The edit form starts with its saved folder selected, and the Folder dropdown can move it to another compatible destination when you tap Update Contact. Entered and saved facts are preserved. Every other field is editable — including an unset signal report, which shows as dim dashes in the edit form's picker until you tap a real one in. See Locked fields in auto-folders for the full picture. The lock is about the contact, not the activation: if the whole session is filed under the wrong park, use the folder-level park correction rather than editing contacts one by one.

Fixing the Wrong Park

Typed US-2352 when you meant US-2325? You don't have to delete the activation and log it again. Open the folder in the Logbook, tap its folder-name card, and choose Change Park from Folder options. While you're still on the air, Wrong park? remains just under the park line in the live session header, so a reference you fat-fingered at setup can be fixed mid-pileup.

It opens the Change Park dialog: search the right park by name or reference, exactly as you would at activation setup. Update Park stays disabled until the park you picked actually resolves and differs from the one you're on, so a half-typed search can never commit.

The correction needs an internet connection. Confirming validates the whole activation first, then commits the folder and every contact inside it together — POTA park reference, the MY_SIG_INFO your export carries, and the operating location the contacts were logged from. A folder that already has a custom label keeps that label, its submission identity, and its place under Parks on the Air. The change is all-or-nothing and safe to retry, so an interruption cannot leave only part of the activation corrected.

It also rescues a folder that landed under Unrecognized program because its saved park was never a usable reference — a park name stored where US-1234 belongs. Those folders refuse new contacts until repaired, and this is the repair: you don't need a valid park in order to set one.

Three things worth knowing:

• Renaming is not a back door. Because a rename only changes the label, a new name in the callsign@reference-YYYYMMDD form that claims a different park, date, or callsign is refused. The park-correction action is the only route that moves the reference and every contact together.
• POTA doesn't find out on its own. If you already uploaded this log to pota.app, follow POTA's log-support process to correct the submitted version. Hamtrax cannot change what POTA already has and blocks a second direct upload of a submitted activation in this version.
• A collision is refused, not merged. If you already have an activation folder for the corrected park on the same date, Hamtrax blocks the correction and names the folder that's already there, rather than quietly folding two sessions into one log.

Per-contact park editing stays locked either way — see the locks above.

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 My Logbook in the sidebar and find the activation folder under Parks on the Air → Activations. The folder displays a green Active badge in the folder list. Select it and tap Resume Activation beneath the Contacts heading 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.

An activation started from the Hunt panel's My Location → Hunting from a park? shortcut is a normal in-progress activation and appears in both places the same way. From Hunt, tap Go to activation on the green You're activating card to open its Add Contact form directly. You can also resume it from the Logbook or Activate tab whenever you want the full live logger (to spot yourself, log activation contacts directly, or finish from the Finish tab).

When you resume, an app-wide radio or antenna you have already chosen stays selected. If either axis is still unselected, Hamtrax may restore that item from the activation's valid saved snapshot. Power follows whichever radio you end up with, so the resumed session runs the watts saved on it.

Ending an Activation

When you're done operating, open the Finish tab. Review your contacts and close out the activation here. You can submit its log directly to POTA or download ADIF for manual submission.

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.

If any logged contact has a problem, the Finish tab leads with a red N issues found banner in place of that card and dims the steps below it until the list is cleared. Page through the issues with ‹ › and tap Edit to jump straight to that contact's row on the Log tab, where the same reason is shown in red -- or tap Ignore and proceed anyway to dismiss the issue you're looking at and move to the next. An N issues ignored -- Restore note stays visible in the banner (and on the success card after the last one) so a change of heart is one tap. Once every issue is fixed or ignored, the steps light back up. Ignoring is a decision, not a fix: the contact's row stays flagged on the Log tab, and resuming the activation later flags everything fresh. The banner is a last check, not a gate -- Finish Activation still works with issues outstanding.

Direct upload: switch on the Upload to POTA on Finish row. It starts off and remembers your choice for that POTA account, and its ⓘ explains what happens: Finish saves your activation first, and the full saved log uploads once it is synced and your POTA connection is available. Not connected yet? The row shows a Connect POTA button instead of the toggle (you can also sign in ahead of time in Settings → Integrations — Hamtrax renews that session for you, so it stays ready between activations). If the park spans more than one state or region, an Operating state / region field appears under the row so you can enter the exact POTA location code where you operated — single-region parks fill it in for you. Hamtrax queues the log with Finish and submits only after the cloud accepts closure and all contacts. Offline intent survives restarting the app. Upload failures do not undo Finish, and ignoring a contact warning does not bypass upload validation. Persistent folder status distinguishes submission from completed POTA processing; see upload protections and limits.

Manual submission remains available:

1. Download your log file — grab the ADIF file of all logged contacts, named and formatted for POTA submission. On iPhone, Hamtrax opens the system sheet; choose Save to Files (or the app you want to send it to). ADIF records use UTC, so an evening contact can correctly carry the next UTC calendar date even though it was still the prior evening locally. Contacts logged without a signal report export without the report tags — POTA accepts the log either way. You can always re-download the file later from the activation folder in your Logbook.
2. Submit it on pota.app — add the activation from the pota.app menu if you haven't already, then upload the ADIF file on the My Log Uploads page. Prefer not to leave Hamtrax? Use Upload to POTA on Finish above instead.

The Auto-close on POTA.app toggle sits directly above Upload to POTA on Finish and works independently: with signal, it tells POTA you're off the air when you finish, so hunters stop calling. Finish with no signal and no closing notice is sent, even after you reconnect.

Tap Finish Activation and Hamtrax finalizes the activation record at once, even with no signal; every way of finishing below works the same. In the rare case the cloud can't accept a close while the activation is still open there, Activation reopened puts it back under In Progress so you can finish it again. You can still add contacts and edit photos, links, and equipment later from the activation folder in your Logbook. Later contact changes are not sent to POTA automatically; this version does not support replacement uploads.

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. Closing an activation after the fact records its end as the time of its last contact, not the moment you tapped Finish — so a session you forgot about last week doesn't get recorded as a week-long activation. (The same menu's Delete removes the activation and its contacts entirely, so reach for Finish whenever you just want to close one out.)

One activation at a time

Hamtrax keeps a single activation in progress at a time — that's what lets hunted contacts know exactly which activation to join as park-to-park. While one is open, the door to a second simply closes rather than letting you fill in a form that can't be started:

• On the Activate tab, the New Activation card is disabled and reads Finish your current activation first — your open activation sits above it in the In Progress list, one tap to resume.
• Opening the start form directly (a bookmark, a link) forwards you into the open activation instead. The Hunt panel hides Hunting from a park? from its My Location picker while an activation is open.
• Activate Here is greyed out wherever it would launch a new activation — in a park's detail card, whether you opened it from the hunting map or Park Explorer, with You're already activating beneath it; and on every row of the main Parks search results, greyed together with that line shown once above the list. One exception, and it's deliberate: inside activation setup itself the button stays live, because there it only fills the park into the form you already have open rather than starting anything.
• To start somewhere new, finish the open activation first — from its Finish tab, the ⋯ → Finish on its In Progress row, or End activation on the hunt panel's green card.
• If the cloud refuses a Start anyway — usually because an activation you finished with no signal has reopened — Activation not started names the one to finish before you start again. Check Needs Filing for contacts you logged in the refused activation.

Returning to the same park on the same UTC day continues the same activation. POTA scores a park per UTC day, so if you finish a morning activation and start the same park again that afternoon, Hamtrax reopens the same activation folder — your morning and afternoon contacts stay one log, not two competing folders.

Idle activations close themselves

Forget to tap Finish? Hamtrax ends any in-progress activation once 24 hours pass without a new contact being added. There is no setting for this and nothing to turn on.

Two details make it safe rather than surprising:

• The clock watches when contacts are saved, not their on-air times. Back-logging a contact from last Tuesday five minutes ago proves you're still at the radio and keeps the session alive. A contact dated five minutes ago but added three days ago proves nothing.
• The activation closes honestly, as of its last contact — never the moment the timer fires. A session you walked away from on Sunday afternoon ends Sunday afternoon, so its span never grows to swallow a later trip to the same park. A notice tells you it happened.

Why it isn't optional: an open activation is what hunted contacts file into as park-to-park. A session left open for weeks would keep claiming contacts you made from your couch and put them in a log you might submit to POTA. Letting "live" expire on its own is what keeps that from happening.

If you're on a multi-day outing and log nothing for a full day, the old activation closes and your next contact starts a fresh one — which matches POTA, since it scores each UTC day separately anyway.

Adding a Past Activation

For one old contact, use the Logbook's global Add Contact action and keep the Folder card on Auto-organize. Open My Location or Park, choose From Park and the real park, then open Date & Time (UTC) and enter the past date and time; to type it in your own timezone, expand Time format options beneath the fields and choose local entry. The Folder card then names that activation folder, marked Auto-organized · Parks on the Air / Activations, with Will create … when saved beneath it if the activation doesn't exist yet. Save reuses a finished activation at that park whose recorded session covers the contact's UTC day — including the second day of a session that ran through 0000 UTC — and otherwise creates a closed activation whose start and end are that contact's instant, then files the QSO there. You can also choose a compatible existing activation directly in Folder; see the full form's folder restrictions. You do not need an ADIF file or a pre-existing folder.

For an ADIF or CSV, tap Import a past activation on Activate, or Import beneath Logbook → Parks on the Air → Activations. Both shortcuts open the system-wide Import Contacts page.

Choose Import from file, upload the file, and review the destinations derived from its activity identity. Valid operator-side POTA park fields create finished activation folders through the same validation, duplicate checks, guarded routing, and imported/refused summary as every other import. Hamtrax never guesses a missing park or offers a park override during import. See Importing a single past activation for the full behavior.

Related Pages

• 2D map slow-load recovery -- What the public map shows after five seconds and how to retry without stopping its background load.
• Hunting -- Find and work live POTA activators from the Parks on the Air tab.
• Folders & Labels -- How activation folders organize your contacts.
• Importing Contacts -- Bring past activations and whole logbooks into Hamtrax.