Logbook Hygiene Rules
Hamtrax keeps your logbook organized by refusing bad data up front instead of cleaning it up later. Every way a contact can enter or change in your logbook — the QSO form, the live activation logger, the Hunting page, file and QRZ imports, and later edits — passes through the same checks before anything is saved.
This page lists all of those rules in one place.
The one rule behind everything
A contact can never sit in a folder it doesn't match.
Every save is checked against its destination folder. If the contact and the folder disagree, Hamtrax rejects the save and tells you why — a contact is never quietly filed somewhere it doesn't belong.
What each folder accepts
| Folder | What it accepts |
|---|---|
| All Contacts (root) | Folders only — contacts never live here directly |
| Activations and Hunting (categories) | Folders only — pure containers |
An activation folder (e.g. KA8H@US-1515-20260301) | Only contacts made at that folder's park |
A monthly hunting folder (e.g. June 2026) | Only contacts dated in that folder's month |
| Your custom folders | Anything — this is your free space |
These two matching rules — park for activations, month for hunting — are the heart of auto-organization: an activation folder always reads as one park on one outing, and a monthly folder always reads as one month of hunting.
When you log a contact
- A contact never goes unfiled. If no folder is chosen, the contact is filed into the monthly Hunting folder matching its date, created automatically if needed.
- Adding a contact to an activation pre-locks its identity. The park, date, and your operating location are seeded from the activation and shown as locked — they can't be typed over, so the contact can't drift away from the activation it belongs to.
- Hunted contacts and quick-add cards use the same door. There is no side entrance: every entry surface saves through the same validation as the full QSO form.
- A callsign on your account is required to log. Contacts carry your callsign for folder naming and export.
When you edit a contact
- Folder-defining fields are locked. In an activation folder, the park, date, and your operating location are read-only, each with an explanation (e.g. "Park is locked to US-2325 for this activation."). In a monthly folder, the date is read-only. Custom folders lock nothing. See locked fields.
- Every edit is re-checked. Even beyond the locked fields, a save that would leave the contact mismatched with its folder is rejected with a clear message.
- Edits don't move contacts between folders. The edit form changes a contact's details, not its home. Log through the right flow instead of relocating after the fact.
When you import
- Every contact is auto-routed to its correct folder. Your activations go to activation folders (created as needed), hunted contacts go to their monthly folders, and everything else goes to a custom folder you choose — see how contacts are sorted.
- Activation and Hunting destinations can't be overridden. During import review you may exclude a contact, but you can't redirect it into a folder that doesn't match it.
- Files can't dictate their own filing. Folder paths embedded in an ADIF file are ignored; Hamtrax always re-derives the correct destination from the contact itself.
- Malformed records are rejected before they reach a folder. Contacts with an invalid or missing callsign, or an unreadable date, are turned away at the door — and every rejected or skipped record is listed with its reason, so every record is accounted for.
- Cross-program references stay honest. A SOTA or WWFF reference is never re-labeled as a POTA park.
Duplicates are blocked
- One hunted contact per activator, per park, per UTC day. A double-tap on Contacted, a re-import, or the same hunt logged by two apps with slightly different times all collapse to the single contact you actually made. This rule is enforced on every path — live hunting, manual logging, and imports.
- Imports skip contacts you already have. An exact re-import (same callsign, UTC day, time, band, mode, and parks) is recognized and skipped, whether the duplicate is already in your logbook or repeated within the same file.
Folder operations follow the same discipline
- Only custom folders are yours to create and move. New folders are created under All Contacts, and only custom folders can be relocated — the root, the category folders, and auto-created activation/monthly folders keep their place in the tree, so the structure your contacts rely on can't be rearranged out from under them. (Renaming is always allowed except on the root and categories — a name is a label, and changing it never changes a folder's rules.)
- Deleting a folder never spills its contacts upward. A folder's parent is a container that can't hold contacts, so deletion removes the folder and its contents. To keep the contacts, the delete dialog offers to move them into a new custom folder first — a move that runs through the same validation as everything else.
Why so strict?
Because the payoff is a logbook you never have to tidy. Every activation folder is exactly one park on one day, every monthly folder is exactly one month of hunting, and your stats, maps, and exports are always built from clean data. The guardrails do the organizing so you can spend your time on the air.