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DX Chasing

The DX Chasing tab is where you find distant countries on the air and log them as you work them. It sits in the sidebar just below the Parks on the Air group — whose Hunting entry is its POTA sibling — and it works the same way: a live spot list beside a map, with one-tap logging into folders that organize themselves. (A third row, Repeaters, sits below it and hunts the repeaters near you from a local directory instead of a live feed.)

Where POTA hunting revolves around parks, DX chasing revolves around countries — DXCC entities, the country list ham radio scores DX against. Every spot, contact, and folder in this tab is keyed to an entity, and Hamtrax is strict about them: only current entities from the official ADIF entity list are accepted, so a typo or a deleted entity is rejected rather than guessed.

You can watch the DX feed without an account

Signed out, hamtrax.com carries a DX tab of its own, after Home, Hunt, and Activate (and followed by the Repeaters tab) — the same live cluster feed, filters, world map, and country detail view described below, plus a default-collapsed What is DX chasing? explainer for anyone meeting the term for the first time. Browse as long as you like; logging is the one thing that asks you to create an account, because a QSO needs a logbook to land in. A link to hamtrax.com/#/programs/dx/hunt opens that tab directly whether you're signed in or not.

The title and the setup rows share one lighter, continuous smoked-metal program panel with a crisp neutral rim, with the title starting at the panel's left edge. Its live-count, Refresh, and Filters card remains a darker recessed control well, clearly above the darker DX rows without adding another color or divider.

Live DX cluster spots​

The spot list is fed by the worldwide DX cluster network (via HamQTH), refreshed automatically every few minutes just like the POTA feed. Each card uses the same rounded dark-metal chassis as every other program row: a 1.5px metallic bezel around a smoked identity header, near-black body, and smoked action footer. The header divider is lit only at its two ends and fades away entirely across the middle of the card; the footer has no divider at all and is set apart by its own smoked surface. Band ribbons or status controls never recolor or remove an edge. Its compact header uses a DX-specific country-first order:

  • The country first in the header: its small flag directly left of the name, with any additional region metadata beneath. Time and spot count remain opposite this identity group
  • A quiet, half-bright top-edge ribbon showing a recognized amateur band, or DX when the frequency does not map to one, rather than a divider that appears only when the feed changes bands
  • A tight, borderless Frequency / Mode row, with segmented Frequency fixed in the left slot and plain Mode beside it when the cluster reports one — no Mode label or placeholder appears when it is missing, and Frequency does not move. Where freely licensed country photography exists, one small image stays vertically centered at the body's far right beside the tuning and station rows. Frequency always uses the same bright neutral text as the main headings; Mode remains yellow for voice, CW, and unknown modes and turns blue for recognized digital modes
  • The DX station's callsign beneath the tuning values, with the operator name beside it when known and its official DXCC entity number directly below
  • The shared Tried / Try Later / Contacted action rail

Spots that can't be pinned to a current DXCC entity — maritime-mobile stations, deleted entities — are left out rather than shown with guessed countries. On the map, a DX spot pins at its DXCC entity's map centroid, not the station's exact address: the cluster reports who and where in the world, not a street address, so the map is a propagation picture rather than a park locator.

The map popup keeps that same country-first identity: its top line is the canonical entity title, prefixed by its parent-country flag when available, followed by the DX station's callsign, known operator details, and the smallest segmented frequency readout with plain Mode text. A grouped marker shows that entity heading once above its station cards. A flag can represent the entity's administering country — the Canary Islands correctly keep Spain's flag while the title still identifies the Canary Islands. When the list card has already cached a country's photo set, the popup shows up to four different tiny thumbnails as a stack beside see details. It starts no second photo lookup; the additional thumbnail renditions load only when the stack appears. The rest of the shared interaction is covered in 2D Map.

The Band, Mode, and Last Spotted filters work exactly as they do for POTA hunting: open Filters, then tap a chevron row to expand that control directly underneath it. Opening another filter closes the first.

DX Only​

DX means distant — usually, outside your own borders. The DX Only switch (on by default, with Hide my country as the row subtitle) hides spots for stations located in your own country, so the feed shows only DX. Flip it off in the filters to see everything, including domestic spots. If Hamtrax doesn't know your country yet, the filter hides nothing rather than guessing.

The country detail view​

Tap a DX spot — anywhere on its row in the list, or any non-control area of its map-popup card (including see details) — and it opens the country, not just the station. The popup's status and help controls keep their own actions. Where POTA's detail view is built around a place you can stand in, this one is built around a country you can reach, with the spotted station as the way to reach it today.

It's about the country, but it opens on the station — everything you can act on comes first, and the country introduces itself below, its flag and name heading the whole lower half. Nothing you might tap ever sits under a photo carousel.

  • The station on the air — frequency and mode in the large readout, with the same band-plan warning POTA hunting shows if the frequency sits outside your licence privileges
  • The operator — their name and location when the callbooks know them; tap the callsign to open their full details without leaving the modal
  • Tried, Try Later, and Contacted — the same three actions as the list row and the map pin, reading and writing the same status. Once you've worked the station, a Share Contact button joins them to open that QSO's shareable contact card (see Share Contact)
  • Recent spots — every other time the cluster reported this station, newest first, with who spotted them
  • The country itself — heading the lower half: its flag, its name, its continent, its primary callsign prefix, and its official DXCC entity number
  • Photographs of the place, when Hamtrax has them, freely licensed from Wikimedia Commons — a full-width band beneath that heading; when there is more than one, page through them with the arrows or dots (or swipe), each crediting its photographer with a link back to Commons. Hamtrax knows before it draws the view which entities have photography, so a country without any simply opens with no band — and the layout you see on the first frame is the layout that stays

Country facts​

Country facts closes the detail view, directly under the photographs — or directly under the country heading when there are none — nothing to expand — showing available details about the place you just worked: its capital, when it was founded, GDP per person, its main religion, its main exports, its official languages, its government type, and its area and population. Some entities close with a sentence of context below the cards.

Entities that aren't countries get a different set — under a differently named heading, Entity facts — because the country questions have no answer for them. Antarctica, Bouvet Island, Clipperton Island and the Canary Islands show who administers them, whether anyone lives there, when anyone last put them on the air, and why they're hard to work — which is the interesting part anyway. They never borrow their administering country's economy: the Canary Islands will never show you Spain's GDP.

ARRL DXCC defines the award entity and its context; Hamtrax keys it with the current ADIF entity number. Reviewed encyclopedia data can enrich background facts, but it never supplies a DXCC "status."

Two honest notes. Fact availability varies by entity — an unavailable detail is omitted, and an unresearched entity shows no facts panel, rather than a grid of blanks. And the facts themselves read in English in every language; the labels around them follow your language setting.

Countries and entities are two different things throughout, and the detail view is careful about it: the flag shown for the Canary Islands is Spain's flag, because that's the flag they fly — but everything the view says about the entity is the Canary Islands' own.

Logging a DX contact​

That detail view carries the same one-tap actions POTA hunting uses: Contacted logs the QSO with the callsign, frequency, band, mode, and country pre-filled, while Tried and Try Later track the ones that got away. DX contacts save through the same door as POTA hunts, so a cloud-rejected save announces itself the same way — see Logging a Hunt Contact. Working the same station in the same country twice in one UTC day on the same band and mode is caught as a duplicate — tapping Contacted again shows the same "Already logged today" notice POTA hunting uses. DX deliberately does not use POTA's once-per-UTC-day rule: DXCC credit is awarded per band and per mode, so the same country on 20m and again on 40m is two achievements and Hamtrax keeps both.

Either way, the saved contact records the country and its official ADIF entity number on the QSO itself — so it exports complete (COUNTRY and DXCC fields other logbooks and award programs read), and it shades that country on the world map atop your profile's DX Chasing showcase card. Chase a country, watch it fill in.

Worked a station the cluster never spotted? The Manually add contact card at the top of the list takes a callsign, mode, the shared Signal Report picker, editable UTC date/time, and a Country picker in place of POTA's park field — search by country name, entity number, or callsign prefix (typing 269 or SP both find Poland). Back-date it for an older contact; Hamtrax creates that program-qualified DX month automatically even when the Logbook does not have one yet. The selected entity alone supplies the worked country, official DXCC number, and map centroid; callsign lookup may add the operator's name but cannot replace that location. The duplicate check uses the same UTC-day, band, and mode key as every other DX save, so working the same entity on another band or mode remains valid.

Above the centered live-count card, the panel opens with the same My Location, My Radio, and My Antenna rows as POTA Hunting. My Location is shared with Settings; My Radio and My Antenna are Hamtrax's app-wide current equipment and are stamped onto new contacts. Signed out, My Location is a read-only country derived from your browser language while My Radio and My Antenna open disposable demo editors. Every field can be changed, but closing discards the draft and leaves the mock gear unchanged. Before the first count resolves, three centered digit reels spin in the count position; this card never uses the leaf loader. As soon as any numeric count is ready — including 0 — the number replaces the reels and remains visible while automatic or manual refresh continues. The large count flashes gold as it changes, with changed digits rolling upward for an increase and downward for a decrease, and still jumps to the first live station when tapped. Its footer pairs a subtle Refresh action on the left with Filters on the right. When filters are active, with your filters appears directly beneath the live-count label; a full-width row beneath the actions names each active band or mode value after its own field in the quietest supporting type — Band: 20m · Mode: SSB — with Clear at the far right. Expanding Filters shows chevron summary rows for the cluster controls, and each row grows in place to show its options.

Two things from the POTA panel are deliberately absent here: there is no Spot toggle, because Hamtrax posts hunter spots to POTA.app and there is no equivalent for the DX cluster, and there is no Hunting from a park? quick start, because a country can't be activated.

Where DX contacts are filed​

Every DX contact files into a UTC-month folder listed directly on the DX Chasing card in your Logbook — "August 2026", created automatically on your first DX contact of the month. DX Chasing only hunts, so unlike Parks on the Air its card has no Hunting subheading — the months are the card. Each month row matches the height of POTA's Activations and Hunting parent rows and puts DX Chasing's globe — the same line icon its sidebar row and the public DX tab wear — to the left of its title, so the program stays recognizable before you open the folder. The card's own title line carries its tally on the right — a folder icon with how many DX months you have, and a person icon with how many contacts sit in them — counting DX Chasing alone, so you can see a month's worth of chasing landed where you expected without opening anything. See Folders. These months belong to DX Chasing alone: a DX contact can never land in a POTA month, and a POTA hunt can never land in a DX month, the same hygiene guardrails that keep every program's folders clean. The DX Chasing card itself appears in the folder tree with your first DX contact, so a POTA-only logbook stays exactly as it was. (One exception: a brand-new, empty logbook shows every installed program's card as a starting point.)

Open one of those months and the selected folder keeps the same DX identity: the header shows that same globe and Monthly DX Folder. Add Contact says Add DX Contact and asks for a Country / DXCC entity in both the compact card and See full contact form. Generic worked-station City, State, and Grid controls stay hidden because the entity is their source of truth. It never borrows POTA's worked-station Park field, monthly-folder copy, emblem, or destination. The full form preserves the ordinary My Location, equipment, and power you choose. From Park is visible but greyed out, with an explanation that a park-origin contact belongs in a recent or historical activation/P2P log rather than a monthly DX folder. Use the Logbook-wide Add Contact action for either route: a contact from a park can open current activation setup with that park prefilled and spotting off, or Save can create a finished historical activation at the contact's UTC time.

While you're activating a park, DX contacts file into that activation instead of your DX month. Start an activation and the DX tab grows the same green You're activating card the POTA tab gets, naming your park and the folder your contacts are going to — the editable My Location row steps aside for it, because the park is where you are. Every entity you work from the picnic table lands in the activation's folder, so the log you export for POTA is complete without moving anything by hand. Each save confirms itself with "Logged into your activation" naming the folder, rather than the park-to-park notice a POTA hunt gets. The card says "Hunted DX contacts save into this activation" rather than as park-to-park, and the wording is doing real work: park-to-park means the other station is at a park too, which a DX station generally is not. These are ordinary activation QSOs that happen to be DX.

You lose nothing by this. DX credit has never come from which folder a contact sits in — it is read from the contact's own DXCC entity — so a country worked from a park still lights up your Showcase world map and still counts as worked, exactly as one chased from the couch does. The only difference is where you go to find the contact. Finish the activation and DX contacts go straight back to filing into their monthly folder.

One save is one record — and two tabs are two records

Each tab logs under its own program, and a save never clones itself anywhere. That cuts both ways: log a station once in the DX tab and you have exactly one record — but work a POTA activator abroad and log them in both tabs, and you have two records by design. One is a POTA hunt credit for the park; the other is DX credit for the country. They are different achievements in different programs, so Hamtrax keeps them as the separate contacts they are rather than merging or blocking either.

The Logbook's DX view​

The List / Map / DX switch on every Logbook folder is the other half of the story. The DX view is a per-folder summary of the countries (and US states) the folder's contacts reached, each with its flag and contact count — dependencies and microstates included — open a DX monthly folder to see that month's entity haul, or any activation or custom folder to see how far it reached. It summarizes whatever folder you're looking at, so it has always worked on POTA folders too; DX Chasing just gives it a folder built around exactly what it measures.

  • Hunting -- The POTA side of the same panel: live park spots, filters, and hunt logging.
  • Repeaters -- The third program row: nearby repeaters from a local directory, with its own monthly folders.
  • Folders & Labels -- How program cards and monthly folders organize your contacts.
  • Logbook Hygiene Rules -- The guardrails that keep DX and POTA months separate.
  • Importing Contacts -- How imported contacts reach DX monthly folders, including untagged contacts filed from their DXCC entity or COUNTRY name.
  • Your Profile -- The showcase world map every DX chase shades.
  • 2D Map -- The DX map's markers, popups, and the see-details link into the country detail view.