Hunting

Hunting, the first entry in the sidebar's Parks on the Air group, is your discovery hub for live POTA activations happening on the air right now. It's where you go to find stations to work. (Not chasing parks today? Two sibling rows sit right below the group: DX Chasing for countries, and Repeaters for the machines within reach of where you are.)

[SCREENSHOT: Parks on the Air tab showing the spot list panel beside the map with POTA activation markers]

Activating vs. Hunting

If you're new to POTA, here's the key distinction:

• Activator -- You travel to a qualifying park and operate your radio from there. You need at least 10 QSOs within a single UTC day to count as a valid activation.
• Hunter -- You contact activators from home (or anywhere). Every confirmed contact with an activator earns you hunter credit.

Both sides contribute to the program, and Hamtrax supports both workflows. This page covers hunting; see Activating for running your own activation.

The UTC day resets your hunter credit

Working the same activator at the same park twice in one UTC day is a duplicate, but the moment 0000Z passes it counts again -- and POTA's own hunter guide suggests planning around it:

"Near the end of a UTC day, hunt all available activators now and wait until 0000Z. Then work all the activators again for additional credits and the extra late shift credits."

-- POTA Hunter Guide

This is why Hamtrax keeps one hunted contact per activator, per park, per UTC day rather than collapsing them outright -- the second contact after 0000Z is real credit, not a duplicate. It is also why Hunting folders are cut on the UTC month rather than your local one.

Layout

Parks on the Air is a single unified view with the spot list on one side and the map on the other:

• Spot list -- A scrollable list of every active spot (sorted by frequency by default; configurable), with band and mode chips and quick action buttons.
• Map -- A live map showing the same spots as pins. Pan, zoom, and tap any pin to select the corresponding park: its activator cards highlight in the list — on touch the map centers the pin and pins its tooltip, while on desktop the map stays put and the pin's details open in place.

The list and map stay in sync automatically -- hovering an activator in either view highlights it in the other, and selecting a park on the map marks its activator cards in the list. Because a map selection names the park, two operators activating the same park are marked together. On smaller screens the list becomes a collapsible panel over the map.

The hunt configuration card also shows your radio and antenna. These are not Hunt-only defaults: they are your current equipment across Hamtrax. Pick either one here and the same selection appears in Activate and every new-contact form; pick it in Activate and Hunt updates too. New contacts snapshot the equipment selected when they are saved, so changing it later never rewrites your history.

On the iOS app, when an FT8-capable radio connection is active through Radio Control, an FT8 Auto-Hunt card sits at the top of the activator list. It works matching FT8 activators hands-free through the rig -- see FT8 Auto-Hunt.

First-Run Walkthrough

The first time you open the Parks on the Air view, Hamtrax greets you with a short guided walkthrough that teaches how the app fits together: you make contacts here in Hunting (or in Activating), and your Logbook keeps every one of them, filed automatically. Using a clearly marked synthetic practice activator, it walks you through working a station and logging the contact, then lands you in your Logbook to see it already filed -- before returning you to the live hunting list to work a real one. The contact you log against the practice activator is cleaned up automatically -- it never stays in your real log. You can replay the walkthrough anytime from Settings > Help.

The walkthrough always gets first presentation priority. Hamtrax waits until it is finished or dismissed before showing the separate getting-started checklist, so the two onboarding experiences never compete for attention.

Browsing Parks on the Map

1. Open Hunting under the Parks on the Air group in the sidebar.
2. Live spots appear as highlighted pins on the map; surrounding park locations from the POTA catalog show as smaller pins so you can scout the area.
3. Zoom into a region to see individual parks.
4. Tap any park pin to open the Park Detail modal.

The Park Detail modal shows:

• Park reference (e.g., K-0001) and park name
• The park's entity name and park type in the header subtitle
• Location image (when available) — a full-width photo across the top of the modal; 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 Flickr or Wikimedia Commons
• Distance and bearing from your location, with coordinates in the header subtitle
• Stats: total activations, attempts, and QSOs at that park
• Your activation count at the park (if any)
• Recent activation history — or, for parks no one has activated yet, a "Never activated — be the first on the air from here" prompt
• Activate Here button to start an activation at that park — greyed out, with You're already activating beneath it, while an activation is already open
• Popular Park · See park facts — a yellow pill on parks Hamtrax has researched (see below)

Park facts

Parks Hamtrax has written up carry a yellow Popular Park · See park facts pill in their detail view — in both the Park Detail modal and the activation detail view, so it reads the same wherever you meet the park. Tap it for three short cards: Geography, History, and Did you know?

Two honest notes, the same ones that apply to DX country facts. Parks are written up a batch at a time, so a park Hamtrax hasn't researched yet simply shows no pill rather than three empty cards — the pill's presence is how you know it's one of the popular ones. And the write-ups themselves read in English in every language.

• Images link (Google Images) to see photos of the park

tip

Focus the search box at the top of the sidebar, choose Parks, then type at least three characters from a park reference or name (for example, K-0001 or Pottawatomie). Each result includes Activate Here, which opens activation setup with that park selected. With an activation already running those buttons are greyed out together, with You're already activating once above the list — Hamtrax keeps one activation at a time, so finish the open one first.

Reception Footprint

The hunting map's controls pill has a signal-bars toggle that overlays your reception footprint -- the stations that reported hearing you in the last 30 minutes, from PSK Reporter. Flip it on to confirm your signal is actually getting out (and roughly where) before you keep calling. It needs a saved callsign, and it's a read-only overlay. See Reception Footprint for details.

Finding Live Activations

Live spots appear as highlighted pins on the map, and as cards in the list below the hunt configuration — tap the live activator count at the top of the panel to jump straight down to the first card. Each spot shows:

• Activator callsign and their frequency, with the operator's name beside the callsign once Hamtrax has looked it up — a call it hasn't seen before is looked up in the background and fills in on its own
• Band and mode (e.g., 20m, CW)
• Park reference and park name
• Time since the spot was posted (e.g., 5m ago)

On a hover device, clicking a marker with one activator opens that activator's detail modal directly. When one park marker represents two or more activators, hovering previews — and clicking pins — a vertical stack of regular spot popups, one per operator. On touch devices, tapping pins the same popup or stack. Every operator keeps their own callsign, frequency and mode, quick status buttons (Tried / Try Later / Contacted), band-plan warning when applicable, and full-width see details button. A pinned popup stays open until you dismiss it: tap elsewhere on the map, tap another pin, or use its close button. The activation detail modal shows:

• Park header at the top: park name, an Images link (Google Images), and the park reference followed by its country and region spelled out — DO-0061, Dominican Republic, Independencia. Region names come from POTA's own catalog, so parks outside the US read correctly instead of borrowing a same-spelled US state code. When a park spans multiple regions, only the first is shown with a trailing … — tap to expand the full set
• Park image preview floating over the bottom-right corner of the spotter map
• Per-activator station card for each station currently activating the park: frequency · mode on the first row, callsign + operator name (looked up when the modal opens) on the next
• Spotter map showing where stations that spotted this activator are located. The map progressively draws arcs from the selected park out to every locatable spotter, while the count above the map shows how many of the reporting spotters are on the map so far (e.g. Showing 21 of 22 spotters). Any locations already found stay visible if mapping pauses, and provider limits resume automatically. If some spotters can't be located at all, the map simply shows the ones it found — reopening the activation tries again. A spotter whose callbook record carries no real position is left off both the map and the list rather than drawn at a placeholder spot, so every distance you read is a distance to a real place. Toggle between list and map view using the List / Map buttons; the list runs nearest first and shows each located spotter's country flag before their state and country, their spot comments, and how far they are from the park. On the map, hover over any spotter marker for the same identity — country flag and country, their city or grid square, their callsign, and the operator's name — and click the marker to keep the popup open until you dismiss it. The activator's own gray pin at the park reads the same way once their callsign lookup lands, so the station you're chasing is more than a callsign on the map. Country comes from the callbook when it knows the operator and from the callsign's prefix when it doesn't — Hamtrax carries the complete ITU call-sign series, so a spotter from anywhere on the air shows the right country and flag. Spot history is scoped to the selected program, park, and activator, so one operator appearing at two parks never mixes the two listener groups
• Contacted button (green) to log a QSO in one tap
• Tried button (red) to mark an attempted contact you couldn't complete
• Try Later button (orange) to flag the activator for follow-up so you can come back to them later
• Share Contact button — appears once you've worked that station; it opens that QSO's shareable contact card (see Share Contact)

In the hunting list, each spot row also shows these three action buttons so you can mark status without opening the detail modal, and a contacted spot's row gains the same Share Contact button. Whether a hunter spot is also posted to POTA.app when you tap Contacted is governed by the Spot switch in Station setup (on by default).

After tapping Tried or Try Later, the action buttons are replaced immediately by a status badge showing the current state. Contacted saves a real contact first, so it briefly shows a saving state — Adding… on the list row and in the detail modal, a spinner on the map popup's green button — and ignores extra taps until the local QSO write lands, then shows the same badge. A failed write leaves the action available to retry; once the QSO is durable, a nonessential celebration, notification, review prompt, or optional spot failure cannot turn it back into a failed action and invite a duplicate save. A small undo button on the badge lets you revert the action if you change your mind.

Contacted comes from a recent saved POTA QSO for that activator and normalized park reference, including park-to-park contacts. A contact recorded for another activity program never paints a POTA spot, even when its callsign and reference text match. The badge stays live for 10 hours, and editing the backing contact moves the status immediately. Deleting a contact — individually or with its folder — clears the badge once no matching recent POTA QSO remains (and, with QRZ auto-push on, removes the pushed copy from QRZ).

Band-plan warnings

When an activator is spotted on a frequency outside your band plan — outside every segment your license class may transmit in — Hamtrax marks the spot with an orange warning triangle. It shows everywhere the spot appears: on the spot row in the list, on the per-activator station card in the activation detail modal, and in that operator's map popup, including shared-park stacks. Hover it (or tap on a touch device) for the reminder that this activator's frequency is outside your band plan, so you may not be permitted to transmit there.

It's a heads-up, not a block — you can still log the contact. Warnings appear only once you have a band plan on file (set automatically from your callsign, or chosen manually), so to make them match your privileges set your agency and license class under Settings → Preferences → Station → Band Plan. To hide the triangles entirely, turn off Band plan warnings under Settings → Preferences → Hunting.

Setting Where You're Hunting From

The Station setup section at the top of both the Parks on the Air and DX Chasing panels keeps Location, Radio, and Antenna together as its first three rows. When signed in, tap any of those three rows to change it; signed out, Location is a read-only country while the demo equipment pickers remain explorable. For signed-in POTA hunters, Spot is the fourth row, with its switch on the right and a value that explains respotting or warns when spotting is offline. DX stops after Antenna. In POTA's Location picker, Hunting from a park? sits at the bottom, visually separate beneath the three location choices — it is an activation shortcut, not a fourth location mode.

Distance and nearby-park suggestions are measured from your location. Tap Location under Station setup to set it: pull it from your callsign, use device GPS, or enter it manually — search for a place (a city, park, or landmark), drop in a grid square, or type coordinates. It's the same location picker as Settings, so a location set in one place is the location everywhere.

Locked while you're activating

Start an activation and the picker is replaced by a locked card naming your park. That's not a restriction so much as the truth: every contact saved into an activation folder is recorded as operated from that park, because the folder is the source of truth for where the session happened. The same lock appears in the contact editor. Wrong park on the card? Correct the activation itself with Wrong park? and the operating location follows it, on the folder and on every contact already logged. Finish the activation and the picker comes back.

A manual hunting location can be temporary: choose an auto-revert window (1, 4, 8, or 24 hours, or Never Revert) and Hamtrax counts down and switches back to your callsign's location when it expires — handy when you're hunting away from home for the day.

Signed out, the hunt panel shows your country (detected from your browser language) so parks and distances are still roughly right before you sign in.

Filtering Spots

Use Filters to the right of Refresh in the live-count card footer to narrow the feed. Expanding it shows the same chevron-row pattern as Station setup: each row shows the current value, and tapping it grows that row to reveal the control directly underneath. Only one filter row opens at a time. Tap or click anywhere outside the Filters control and its expanded area to collapse the whole section.

• Band -- expands to the same color-grouped square checkmarks used by the equipment picker. Choose All Bands or exactly one band from 160m through 70cm.
• Mode -- expands to visible radio choices for All Modes, SSB, CW, FT8, FT4, FM, AM, RTTY, PSK, JT65, and SSTV
• Last Spotted -- expands to a clock for how recent a spot must be to still appear. Once the row finishes opening, the selected time slides into a larger readout above the clock and updates as you move the hand. Drag the grab ball or tap the clock face in 10-minute stops; with the clock focused, Arrow keys move by the same steps. Straight up at 12 o'clock means 1 hour, and the whole clock face fills red. Shorter windows fill only the elapsed part before the hand.

Whatever band or mode you pick stays visible next to Filters when the section is collapsed, so an active filter is never hidden from you. When either is active, a faint Clear action appears at the far right of that same row so you can remove the band and mode filters without opening the disclosure. Your Last Spotted window still applies.

tip

Combine filters across dimensions for precision. For example, show only CW activations on 20m.

info

If you always hunt the same band or mode, pin them under Settings → Preferences → Hunting. The panel then opens already filtered to them every time. Change either under Filters to hunt something else — that change holds while you stay on Parks on the Air, and your default returns the next time you open the tab. Clear removes the current panel's band and mode filters rather than falling back to or changing your saved default.

info

POTA spots refresh every few minutes. If an activator just posted a spot and you don't see it yet, give it a moment.

Real-Time Updates

The live feed refreshes automatically in the background. Spots and activations update without you needing to reload, and the large number in the centered live-count card flashes gold when the feed changes. Digits that changed roll upward when the count rises and downward when it falls. Tapping that count scrolls the panel straight down to the first activator card; the footer pairs a subtle Refresh action on the left with Filters on the right.

Logging a Hunt Contact

When you tap an active spot in the list or on the map, the activation detail modal opens with a Contacted button. Tapping it creates a QSO record with the activator's callsign, frequency, band, mode, and park reference pre-filled -- no separate form needed. Logging a hunt contact requires a callsign on your account; if yours isn't set, Hamtrax prompts you to add one in Settings → Account first.

If you already logged that activator at that park earlier the same UTC day, tapping Contacted again is blocked with an "Already logged today" notice instead of double-counting the hunt — the POTA case of the importer's once-per-activator, per-program-normalized-reference, per-UTC-day rule. The one exception is hunting from a park: park-to-park contacts are never collapsed this way, because working the same activator again on another band is a genuinely distinct P2P QSO.

If the Spot switch in Station setup is on (default), Hamtrax saves the QSO first and then attempts a hunter spot on POTA.app confirming you worked the activator. If POTA.app rejects that optional spot, your contact stays safely logged, the action still reports success, and Hamtrax does not claim it was spotted. Offline, the row explains that spotting needs internet and disables the switch.

The save itself is local-first: the contact is written to your device — usually instantly, though the Adding… state remains until that local write succeeds and can linger a few seconds when a save queues behind an in-flight cloud upload — and synced to the cloud in the background. In the rare case that the cloud guard permanently rejects the queued save, Hamtrax shows a warning notification ("Contact needs filing") and keeps the contact under Logbook → Needs Filing with the exact reason — a hunt that looked logged never disappears in silence. Because the Contacted badge is drawn from the saved QSO, a rejection also un-paints that badge; the notification is what explains why.

If you attempted a contact but couldn't complete it, tap Tried to record the attempt, or tap Try Later to flag the activator to come back to later. Once you tap any action, the modal shows a status badge -- tap the undo button on the badge to revert. A Tried mark belongs to that activator, activity program, and normalized reference: marking it, undoing it, or later logging the contact changes only the matching program's status, never a same-looking activity in another program. Try Later uses the same program-qualified identity for marking and undoing, but remains a separate reminder stored only in this browser for its ten-hour window. Logging a QSO does not clear it, and FT8 Auto-Hunt does not set it.

info

On iOS with an FT8-capable radio connection, FT8 Auto-Hunt can set Contacted and Tried for you automatically as it works FT8 activators hands-free. It uses the exact same status system, so an auto-hunted contact lands in your monthly Hunting folder — or in your open activation's folder as park-to-park, when one is in progress — just like one you tapped by hand.

Hunting From a Park (Park-to-Park)

Some operators run the activation playbook in reverse: set up at a park, and instead of calling CQ and waiting for hunters, hunt other activators from the picnic table. Every one of those contacts is a park-to-park QSO — and every one of them counts toward activating your own park, because POTA scores what the log shows, not how you operated:

What POTA says

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

"If a hunter is also at a designated Parks on the Air park, this QSO becomes a 'Park to Park' (P2P)." — and for it to count: "All other activator rules have to be followed for it to be a valid park to park QSO."

— POTA Rules

Ten P2P hunts from your park in one UTC day is an activation. Even under ten, POTA's guidance is to submit anyway: "Courteous activators will still submit logs for unsuccessful activations to ensure their hunters get credit for the QSOs."

Hamtrax makes this automatic. While exactly one matching POTA activation is in progress, every POTA contact you hunt files into that activation's folder as a park-to-park QSO — stamped with your park — instead of the monthly Hunting folder. When you later export that folder, the P2P contacts are right there in the log you submit to POTA; nothing needs to be moved by hand.

What about DX and repeaters?

An activation isn't only a POTA affair. You are at the park for the whole session, so every contact you make there belongs in the log you submit — whatever tab you made it from.

• DX Chasing follows you into the activation. Work an entity off the cluster while activating and it files into the activation's folder, not your DX month, and the DX tab shows the same green You're activating card saying so. It is not stamped park-to-park — that claim needs the other station to be at a park too — so it files as an ordinary activation QSO. Your DX credit is untouched: it comes from the contact's DXCC entity, never from the folder.
• Repeaters stop instead. POTA doesn't count a contact made through a repeater toward an activation, so rather than file one somewhere useless the Repeaters tab removes its logging controls for the duration and says why. You can still add the contact deliberately from its own month folder in the Logbook.

Each program decides this for itself, once, and every surface reads that one answer — the panel card you see, the folder the save picks, and the guard at the write door cannot disagree about it.

How it works in the panel:

• Start an activation without leaving the hunt panel. Tap Location, then tap the unchanged Hunting from a park? button at the bottom beneath the three location choices. The picker closes first. If the Hunt configuration card is off-screen, Hamtrax scrolls it into view; then the whole card slides aside and the park form slides in. Name your park under Select Park and tap Start Activation. The header row it arrives with is also the way back. That's the whole trip — no setup form, no frequency required, and you stay on the hunt list. The Select Park field shimmers gold until a park is named — the same gold hint the Activate tab puts on its own park and frequency fields. Opening the park form does not request your location: search by reference or name whenever you like, or tap Find Nearest to request a fresh device fix. If the park field is blank and you're within 0.5 miles of the closest park, that tap selects it; otherwise Hamtrax opens the nearby-parks list. Manual park search keeps working even when location access does not. Starting this way never posts a POTA spot — a reverse activator hunts; they don't usually want POTA.app sending hunters to them. (Starting from the Activate tab as usual still works.)
• Already have an activation open? The Hunting from a park? quick-start button is hidden from the Location picker while any activation is open — or while several unfinished legacy sessions remain. Resume or finish a matching POTA activation from the green card; otherwise use the In Progress list on Activate. Hamtrax keeps one activation in progress at a time, so finish the open one first. And if your account has no callsign yet, Start stays disabled until you set one in Settings.
• The green card is your confirmation. Whenever routing is active, a green You're activating card sits near the top of the Hunt configuration card, naming your park and the destination folder. It takes the place of the editable Location and Spot rows for the duration — your location is the park, and self-spotting belongs to the Activate tab, so the activation answers both. Radio and Antenna remain available in Station setup. If you don't see the green card, hunts are filing into the monthly folder as normal — and that's when the Contacts will be saved within folder chip at the top of the panel names your monthly folder instead. A legacy multiple-activation warning may appear alongside that monthly chip; it also promises monthly filing. Every destination surface reads the same rule the save does, so they can't disagree. The Hunting from a park? button disappears from Location whenever any activation row remains open, even when a dormant or different-program activation cannot claim the selected Hunt program; finish it before starting another.
• Everything logs the same way. Contacted taps, the manual "contact made earlier" card, sidebar search adds, and FT8 Auto-Hunt all follow the routing. Back-dating a manual contact to a day before the activation opened files it monthly — it belongs to history, not this session. When monthly filing applies, the card's editable UTC date creates the matching POTA month even if that leaf does not exist in the Logbook yet.
• Done? End it from the card. The activation is marked finished as of its last contact, and hunts return to monthly filing.

Three rules keep this honest:

1. One activation at a time. Hamtrax allows a single in-progress activation. Filing considers only genuine live sessions: one live activation can claim a hunt from any program that files into it, several live sessions are ambiguous and stay monthly, and dormant legacy rows are ignored for contact routing. Any open row still blocks starting a new activation until you finish it — which is why Activate Here is greyed out until you do — with You're already activating beneath the button in a park's detail card, and once above the results list in the sidebar's park search.
2. Same UTC day only. A hunt joins the activation only when its UTC day falls inside the session — including a session running past 0000Z. POTA scores per Zulu day, so a same-day contact made before you tapped Start still belongs.
3. No duplicate collapse for P2P. Re-working an activator on another band mid-session saves as a distinct contact, exactly as POTA counts it. (Plain hunts keep the once-per-activator-per-day rule.)

tip

Left an activation running by accident? Hamtrax ends any in-progress activation automatically after 24 hours without a new contact being added, closing it as of its last contact. It's automatic and always on — see Idle activations close themselves.

FT8 Auto-Hunt

FT8 Auto-Hunt works FT8 activators for you, hands-free, straight through an FT8-capable radio connection. When that capability is confirmed, an FT8 Auto-Hunt card appears at the top of the hunting activator list -- directly under the hunt filters and above the manual-contact card. Press Start Auto-Hunt and Hamtrax tunes the rig to each matching FT8 spot, listens for the activator, completes the standard FT8 exchange, and logs the contact. Auto-Hunt contacts count as your own new contacts everywhere — including QRZ auto-push when that toggle is on.

Requirements

FT8 Auto-Hunt appears only when all of these are true:

• You're on the iOS app (it drives the radio over the network).
• An FT8-capable connection is active via Settings → Radio Control (currently Icom IC-705 → Direct Wi-Fi). Future methods without FT8 support will not show the card.
• You have a callsign on your profile -- it's transmitted on the air, so it's required to start.

It checks propagation first

Before the first activator is called, Auto-Hunt confirms your signal is actually getting out. The Check propagation first toggle sits on the card and is on by default -- it resets to on every run, so it's never saved. With it on, Hamtrax runs a short preliminary test of up to three attempts. Each attempt sends one test CQ on the band's standard FT8 calling frequency (for example 14.074 MHz on 20m, where the world's monitoring receivers listen), then checks PSK Reporter every few seconds for a reception report of your callsign -- confirming the moment one appears rather than idling on a single delayed check. Each check also covers the earlier test transmissions, since PSK Reporter reports arrive with a delay. While it runs, the card reads "Preliminary test -- attempt N of 3" with a Broadcasting / Checking sub-status.

• Heard on any attempt -- The test stops early and hunting starts immediately.
• Unheard on all three attempts -- Auto-Hunt does not start, and the card reads "Auto-Hunt not started -- none of the 3 test transmissions appeared on PSK Reporter. Please adjust your radio or antenna and try again."
• PSK Reporter isn't returning data (two checks in a row fail -- a network or service outage, not an antenna problem) -- The test stops early and the hunt proceeds anyway, with an amber notice on the card that the propagation check was skipped rather than passed.

It uses your current hunt filters

Auto-Hunt targets the FT8 activators that match the Band and Mode filters set above the card -- the same filters that scope your live activator list. Before you start, a highlighted strip spells out the scope: "It will call all N FT8 activators currently matching your filters," and lists the matching callsigns. If zero activators match, the card tells you to widen your filters. Already-contacted activators are excluded from the target list.

caution

A saved Parks on the Air default Mode under Settings → Preferences → Hunting applies here too. If that default is any mode other than FT8, every fresh open of the Hunt panel leaves Auto-Hunt with zero targets before you have touched a filter. Set the Mode filter to FT8 -- or clear it -- before you start.

How it marks contacts

Auto-Hunt uses the exact same status system as the manual Contacted / Tried buttons above:

• Contacted -- The FT8 exchange completed (the activator sent RR73 / 73). A real QSO is saved through the standard hunt-contact path -- to your monthly Hunting folder, or to your open activation's folder as park-to-park when one is in progress -- with the actual exchanged signal reports as RST sent/received, the park reference, and equipment stamping, including the optional confirming hunter spot to POTA.app.
• Tried -- Hamtrax transmitted calls but never completed the exchange.
• Unmarked -- Activators that were never called (never heard on the air, or heard but never free to call) are left alone.

It hunts opportunistically

FT8 decodes every station in the passband at once, so Auto-Hunt doesn't wear blinders while it waits: every 15-second cycle, it checks the decoded messages for all of your queued targets, not just the one it's currently working. Its per-cycle decisions mirror what an experienced hunter does at the dial:

• Any transmission from the activator is an opening. A CQ -- or an RR73/73 finishing someone else's contact -- gets your call on the very next cycle. Auto-Hunt never waits for a clean "CQ POTA": the moment an activator signs off with another hunter is exactly when a call should land.
• Mid-exchange means hold, not skip. An activator heard working another hunter is provably workable; Auto-Hunt shows the copied signal report and pounces the instant their current contact ends. It won't waste calls into the middle of someone else's exchange.
• Dead air means look around. If the current activator has given nothing while another queued target is on the air in the same passband, Auto-Hunt jumps: a target that answered you beats one calling CQ, which beats one that's audible but busy -- and a busy target only wins the jump when the current one was never copied at all. Ties go to the strongest signal, a jump never retunes the radio, and the passed-over activator returns to the front of the queue. A jumped-to target that's free is called on the very next cycle -- timing and signal already known; a busy one is held for its sign-off.
• A written-off activator gets a second chance. "Not heard" and "Heard, never free" aren't final verdicts while the run lives: those stations stay on the watchlist, and the moment one of them is decoded again -- propagation shifts by the minute -- it rejoins the queue, jumped to immediately if the current target is dead air. A Tried station is never called again automatically, but its late RR73 still completes and logs the exchange you already transmitted.

Queued activators that have been heard on the air also get worked before ones that haven't, and if a target you called earlier confirms late with an RR73, the contact is logged the moment it arrives. In short: an activator you can provably work right now always beats one you're still hoping to hear.

While it's running

Each activator shows a live status, with the spot's frequency and the park's location (US state, or country for DX parks) in small text beside the callsign. The station currently being worked displays a three-step progress strip -- an ear (heard them on the air), a speech bubble (calling them), and a handshake (confirming the contact) -- with completed steps lit and the active step pulsing. Auto-Hunt never calls blind: the ear fills only after the activator's own FT8 transmission is decoded, and the signal report you copied them at appears beside the strip the moment they're first decoded, including while they're still busy with another hunter. A queued station that has already been heard shows an ear with its signal report -- it's next in line. A queued station that only ever appears as the addressee of decoded messages shows Hunters calling them: other hunters are reaching that activator, but your station hasn't decoded the activator itself yet -- a one-way path, and Auto-Hunt never calls a station it can't copy (the contact could never be confirmed). Other waiting and finished stations show a word instead: Queued, Contacted, Tried, Not heard (or Heard only their hunters, when the pileup was audible but the activator never was), Heard, never free (copied on the air but never free to call), or Skipped -- and a skipped row spends its frequency/location slot on a short red reason instead (bad spot data, tune failed, or radio never keyed), so a skip is never a mystery. A red pulsing Transmitting indicator lights whenever the rig is actually keyed -- confirmed by the rig itself, not assumed. A Stop button ends the run at any time. The card's caption reminds you: "Transmits over your radio as <CALLSIGN> -- stay at the controls."

You can also edit the queue mid-run: every still-queued row has a small ✕ to its left that drops that activator from the run. Dropped activators collect in red at the bottom of the list, below a divider, where each one's ✕ puts it back at the end of the queue. The station currently being worked can't be dropped (that's what Stop is for), and finished ones are already history.

At the bottom of the card, See history opens a scrollable log of everything on the air during the run: every decoded message from any station, plus every message your rig actually transmitted (marked TX), each with its time and signal report. Rows involving the activators you're targeting are highlighted blue; anything you sent or that names your callsign is highlighted green -- so your own QSO thread pops out of the pileup at a glance. The log sticks around after the run ends so you can review it, and clears when a new hunt starts.

One reading tip: FT8 messages put the addressee first and the sender second -- K2L KG7OH DM33 is KG7OH calling K2L, not K2L transmitting. A blue row often means another hunter calling your target, so blue alone doesn't mean the activator is reaching you; the per-station statuses above tell you whether the activator itself has been decoded.

A hunt never just vanishes: when a run ends for any reason -- the queue finished, you pressed Stop, the connection closed while the app was in the background, or the rig stopped responding -- the card explains why it ended along with the final contacted and tried tally and the clock window the run covered (for example 0 contacted · 0 tried · 2:32 PM – 2:41 PM), and the history log stays open for review until you start the next hunt.

Stay at the controls

Auto-Hunt transmits on your license. The hunt keeps running while you browse other parts of Hamtrax -- the navbar radio pill turns into a pulsing red tower whenever the rig is actually keyed, so you always know your transmitter is on the air, and returning to the hunting panel lands on the live run. It stops automatically if the radio link drops (including when the radio goes silent -- the app detects a dead link within seconds) or if the radio stops confirming tune commands. Backgrounding the app cancels any transmission instantly (the radio is never left keyed) and pauses the hunt -- Auto-Hunt only sequences contacts while Hamtrax is in the foreground. Your radio connection stays alive in the background, so when you come back the rig is still connected and you can start hunting again right away; you never have to reconnect first. You're responsible for the transmission, so stay nearby.

Auto-Hunt is the only FT8 surface in Hamtrax today. The mic-based FT8 Decoder tool — which listened through your phone's microphone and only decoded and displayed messages with a manual Log button — is not currently available. Auto-Hunt uses the radio's own network audio, transmits, completes QSOs itself, and marks spots for you.

Related Pages

• Activating -- Start, log, and finish your own POTA activation.
• DX Chasing -- The same hunt shape, keyed to countries instead of parks.
• Repeaters -- Work the machines near you, from a local directory rather than a live spot feed.
• Folders & Labels -- How monthly Hunting folders organize your contacts.
• 2D Map -- Map interaction, overlays, and the reception footprint.