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2D Map

The 2D map is a full-screen interactive map that plots live ham radio spots and activations on a flat projection. It's the fastest way to scan activity in your region or anywhere in the world.

Getting Around the Map​

The map works the way you'd expect from any modern mapping app:

  1. Pan -- Drag to move around the map. In embedded touch views, such as the Logbook folder map, one-finger swipe scrolls the surrounding panel; use two fingers to pan the map. Every map using this mode keeps a Use two fingers to drag the map reminder in its bottom-left corner.
  2. Zoom -- Pinch on mobile or scroll on desktop to zoom in and out. You can also use the zoom buttons on the map controls pill at the bottom of the view.
  3. Recenter -- Tap the target icon on the map controls pill to jump back to the current map anchor. In hunting/logbook maps that is your station; during an ongoing activation it is the activation park.
  4. Tap a marker -- On a hover device, clicking a marker with one activator opens that activator's details directly. When two or more activators share a park marker, hovering previews — and clicking or tapping pins — a vertical stack of regular spot popups, one per operator. Each live POTA or DX popup is one straight-sided card. POTA starts with the callsign, then the operator's callbook name and location when known; DX starts with the canonical entity title, prefixed by its parent-country flag when available, then keeps the callsign and known operator name together above that location. A grouped DX stack shows that entity heading once above its station cards. Both continue with frequency and mode, status controls, a band-plan warning when applicable, and the gold see details row with a chevron. Catalog park pins in Hunt, Activate setup, and Park Explorer use the same 300px dark card, left-aligned title, divider, and gold details row; a mouse click still opens details directly, while touch pins the card first. Selecting a park also marks its activator cards in the list beside the map — every activator on that park, since a selection names the park rather than one operator. See Finding Live Activations for the full interaction. The DX Chasing map works the same way, and its see details action opens the country detail view instead of a park. On the Repeaters map a marker is a repeater rather than an operator: its straight card keeps frequency and mode together, separates the callsign/locality underneath, and carries no status controls or see details action because there is no repeater detail page. Signed in, that card keeps an outlined Log Contact button instead; signed out it carries no button at all. There is a third case: while an activation is live the button is gone even signed in, because repeater contacts can't be logged during one. No map popup has a corner X: hover previews disappear when you leave the marker/card, and pinned popups begin closing the moment you press empty map space — even if that press turns into a drag. Clicking a marker that already owns a hover preview pins that existing card without closing and reopening it; moving far enough to drag still dismisses the preview. Choosing another marker or pressing Escape on a keyboard closes them too. While a popup stays pinned, unrelated markers fade away so the chosen subject stays clear, and return when it closes. On a POTA activation-detail spotter map, selecting a spotter keeps the activator's gray park pin visible too. On a Logbook folder map, selecting a contact also keeps the resolved You pin that owns that QSO. Hovering over a marker on a desktop only dims its neighbors a little; the full fade belongs to pinned popups.
  5. Hover over a Hunting marker -- On wide screens, hovering over a marker on any Hunting map highlights its matching list item and scrolls that item into view by default. Turn off Settings > Preferences > Map > Auto-scroll activator list to keep the list still without turning off the matching highlight.

For actionable live POTA, DX, and catalog-park cards, an already-available place-photo set appears as a small stack at the right edge of see details. The popup reads the photo metadata already cached by the list or another view, and each visible layer shows a different photo. It never starts another photo lookup; displaying the stack may load up to four tiny thumbnail renditions. When several activators share a park, that shared place-photo stack appears once on the first operator card.

The map is locked to a north-up orientation -- rotation is disabled to keep the view consistent.

[SCREENSHOT: 2D map with activity markers and a spot detail popup]

What the Map Shows​

In the Parks on the Air tab, the map renders live POTA activations as individual park markers. Marker color reflects the activation's status — default activator, hunted (contacted), attempted, or marked for retry.

The DX Chasing tab has its own map on the same layout, showing live DX cluster spots. A DX marker pins at its DXCC entity's map centroid rather than the station's address — the cluster reports who and where in the world, not a street address — so that map reads as a propagation picture. Status colors and the gold see details action behave identically.

The Repeaters tab uses the same map for something different: not spots, but repeaters — and not just the nearby ones. The map carries the whole directory: zoomed out, repeaters gather into cluster bubbles sized by how many they hold (tap one and the map zooms in until it splits, the same way the Park Explorer unpacks parks), and close in every repeater stands at its own published location — or, where several repeaters share one point, on a short leader line back to it (see When Pins Land on the Same Spot). Hovering a pin names the repeater — callsign, output frequency, and its offset · tone · mode line. Because nobody is transmitting on a directory entry, those pins carry no hunted/attempted/retry colors and no status controls — tapping one opens the repeater's details (offset, access tone, mode, distance from the active browse center). When the directory's coordinate is a town center, a converted grid square, or a rounded-off number rather than the tower's own site, the card adds one quiet Approximate line saying which, so a pin that's a mile out never reads as surveyed. The 50-mile ring belongs to the list beside the map; widening the search to 150 miles refills the list, while the map always shows everything. See Repeaters.

When several activators share a park, they stay on one park marker with an activator-count badge because they have the same coordinates. That shared-park marker does not split as you zoom; its popup stacks one regular operator card for each activator.

The same MapView component is reused elsewhere in the app to plot your logged QSOs (in the Logbook tab and folder detail views) with great-circle arc lines from your station to each contact, show logged-contact arcs during ongoing activations, and draw spotter arcs inside POTA detail maps. Those views are covered in their own sections of the docs.

Marker Clustering​

When you're zoomed out to a wide view, Hamtrax groups nearby spots into clusters. Each cluster displays a number showing how many spots it contains.

  • Zoom in to break clusters apart and see individual markers.
  • Tap a cluster to zoom into that area and expand it.

As you zoom in further, clusters dissolve into individual spot markers that you can tap for details.

tip

If you're looking for activity in a specific area, zoom in first. Clustering keeps the map clean at wide zoom levels, but the spots are all still there once you get closer.

When Pins Land on the Same Spot​

Clustering pulls apart markers that are near each other. It can do nothing about markers that sit on the exact same coordinate — a club's 2m and 70cm repeaters on one tower, two parks published at the same point, two contacts whose locations resolve to the same place. Those are zero distance apart at every zoom level, so no amount of zooming in would ever separate them, and only the pin drawn last would respond when you tapped it or hovered over it.

So once you're zoomed in close, Hamtrax fans them out instead. Pins that would land on top of each other spread onto a small ring around the shared point, and each one draws a thin line back to where it really is — the pin has been moved on purpose, so something has to point at the truth. Every pin in the fan is its own target: hover over any one of them, or tap it, and you get that repeater or park and no other. Tapping one also fades the rest of the fan away, so there is never any doubt which pin the card belongs to. Selecting one still flies the camera to its real location, and QSO arcs still start and end on true coordinates.

Three things are worth knowing about how it behaves:

  • It only happens close in. A fanned pin is never allowed to sit more than about 5 km from its true coordinate, so at wide zoom levels the fan simply doesn't happen and nothing moves at all. Maps that open on a world view — the Parks on the Air hunt map, Park Explorer's opening frame — look exactly as they always have.
  • A pile too big to fan keeps a count instead. When more markers share a point than a ring can honestly hold, one pin stays on the true coordinate wearing a number: how many are still stacked underneath it. Zoom in further, or use the list beside the map, which is always the exhaustive one.
  • It applies everywhere the map draws individual glyphs — POTA spot pins, your logged QSO and You origin pins in the Logbook and folder maps, Park Explorer's park glyphs, and the repeater pins on the Repeaters directory map. It is not a per-tab behavior you have to remember.

Day/Night Overlay​

The map displays a real-time day/night shadow showing where it's currently dark around the world. A faint twilight band around the terminator marks the gray-line zone, where HF propagation is often enhanced.

[SCREENSHOT: 2D map showing day/night terminator overlay]

info

The gray-line band is the area between 84 and 96 degrees of angular distance from the subsolar point. It updates every minute as the Earth rotates.

Reception Footprint (PSK Reporter)​

On the POTA hunting map, a signal-bars button on the controls pill toggles your reception footprint -- the stations that have reported hearing you in the last 30 minutes, sourced from PSK Reporter. It's a quick way to confirm your signal is actually getting out, and roughly where, instead of guessing and hoping.

  • Turn it on and Hamtrax immediately plots every receiver that heard your callsign as a warm-red dot, then quietly refreshes every few minutes while it stays on.
  • A thin bar above the toggle fills as the next refresh approaches -- empty just after an update, full when the next one is due -- so you can see at a glance how fresh the footprint is.
  • The toggle is disabled until you've saved a callsign in Settings -- a tooltip explains why.
  • The dots are a read-only overlay; they never touch your log.

Reception data comes from PSK Reporter. For a focused check with an editable callsign, a receiver list, and an explicit five-minute refresh timer, open the full-page PSK Reporter tool.

[SCREENSHOT: POTA hunting map with the PSK Reporter reception footprint toggled on]

Filtering Spots​

You can narrow down what appears on the map using the hunt filters:

  1. Open the Parks on the Air tab (or DX Chasing for cluster spots) — the tab you are in is the active dataset.
  2. Use the band and mode filters in the panel to refine further.

Map Tile Layer​

Hamtrax uses a dark-themed custom map style at low zoom levels, designed for comfortable viewing during long sessions and to make the colored activity markers stand out. The map is built on MapLibre GL and renders country and regional boundaries for geographic context.

Major city names are shown on this overview map by default. Hamtrax begins with cities above 10 million people, then lowers the population threshold as you zoom in. A small dot anchors every displayed name at the city's coordinates; MapLibre hides the dot with its name whenever labels overlap. Turn them off under Settings > Preferences > Map > Major city names.

When you zoom in past a threshold, the map crossfades to a stock OpenStreetMap raster layer that provides street-level detail. The transition is smooth, and the zoom indicator on the map controls pill shows you how far through the zoom range you are. At that same transition, connection arcs switch from their colored overview styling to near-black so they stay legible over the lighter street tiles.

tip

The dark map style is optimized for the Hamtrax color system. Spot markers, clusters, and the day/night overlay are all tuned to be clearly visible against the dark background.

Map Controls Pill​

A floating pill at the bottom-center of the map gives you quick access to the most common map actions:

  • Recenter -- Jump the view back to the current map anchor. The button is disabled when you're already centered.
  • Zoom in / Zoom out -- Step the zoom level up or down one increment at a time. A small indicator between the buttons shows where you are in the zoom range.
  • Reception spots (POTA hunting map only) -- Toggle your PSK Reporter reception footprint on or off. The button is disabled until you've saved a callsign. See Reception Footprint below.
  • Center location (POTA hunting map only) -- Tap the pin control to drop a pink center pin and reveal the live location under the middle of the map. The expanded badge reminds you to drag the pink pin to see location, and shows two readings of that point -- its coordinates and its Maidenhead grid square -- each with its own copy button. Copying either one briefly changes that line to Copied, then collapses the badge back to the hidden state.

The pill floats over the map and stays out of the way of markers and popups.

Connection Lines​

QSO Arcs (Logbook and activation maps)​

When viewing your logged QSOs on the map (in the Logbook tab and folder detail views), Hamtrax draws great-circle arc lines between your station and each contact's location. These lines show the signal path of each QSO. Tap any line to see the contact details. When Hamtrax can resolve where you operated from for that QSO, pinning the contact keeps its marker, the matching You pin, their arc, and the complete popup in the tightest safe frame. Every other pin and arc fades away. Closing the popup restores the same full-folder contact-and-operator overview used when the map opened. Your station location is resolved from the QSO's stored coordinates first, then from a safely recognized MY activity reference, and finally from the guarded folder origin when that view supplies one. Unknown or contradictory activity data contributes no catalog location and never invents an origin pair.

During an ongoing POTA activation, logged contact markers also draw QSO arcs back to the activation park anchor. That same park anchor owns the self/user glyph, initial camera, and recenter target. Spotter-only markers stay marker-only until they become logged contacts.

User Location Marker​

On the hunting map, Hamtrax shows your station location as a user-location pin when your preferences resolve to device GPS, manual coordinates, or callsign-based lookup. In logbook maps, Hamtrax may instead show one or more "You" operator pins using the same guarded location order described above. Each logged QSO keeps its own program-qualified pin and popup presentation, so identical reference text from different programs does not merge names or styling; unresolved references use the neutral contact pin. During an ongoing activation, the self/user glyph moves to the activation park. Read-only activator detail maps show the activator's pin instead of your self pin. Hover over that pin for the same rich identity popup the spotter markers use — country flag and country, callsign, operator name, and their city or grid square — and click it to pin the popup open. Until the activator's callsign lookup resolves, the pin keeps a plain callsign label.

State Boundaries and Country Shading​

US state boundaries are drawn on Hamtrax's maps for additional geographic context.

Looking for the world map of every country you've worked? That lives on your profile's DX Chasing showcase card — the only map on the Showcase. Logbook and folder maps deliberately don't shade countries — each one stays scoped to the contacts it's showing, so a folder's map tells only that folder's story.

Activation Setup Mode​

Before you start a POTA activation, a Select a Park hint pill animates above the map until a park is chosen. Opening setup does not request your location. Tap Find Nearest to request a fresh device location and save it to your shared location preferences. If the park field is blank, Hamtrax auto-selects the closest park only when you're within 0.5 miles; otherwise it opens the nearby-parks list so you can choose. Manual park search remains available if you deny location permission. A mouse click on a setup-map park opens its details directly; a touch tap pins the shared straight card first, then its gold see details row continues. The self-location glyph starts at your known Hamtrax location; selecting a recognized park slides it to the park's resolved location with slow-fast-slow motion and two radiant omnicolor beams on each of its north, east, south, and west axes. Only after the glyph arrives does the camera fly to the map's closest supported zoom. When only a grid square is available, the resolved preview uses that grid's center. At the destination, the self glyph becomes the single interactive park pin instead of covering a second target. Clearing the Park field slides it back first, then the camera returns home at the normal overview zoom. Your saved location never changes, and Reduce Motion completes the glyph phase immediately before the camera snaps without beams. The park-selector and frequency inputs each show a soft shimmering perimeter that fades once you fill them in -- a visual cue pointing you to the next field. The Hunt tab's Hunting from a park? setup uses the same explicit location flow.

Activation Map Mode​

During a POTA activation, the map enters activation mode. The activation park is the single map anchor: the self/user glyph sits there, the camera and recenter button return there, and logged contact markers draw QSO arcs back there. Resumed sessions use the stored park coordinates, with the park grid as a fallback. The map also shows markers for stations that have spotted you (spotter markers), stations you've logged (hunter markers), and stations that are both (spotter+logged markers). Spotter-only markers stay marker-only. Each category has a distinct color. Logged-contact markers reuse the same rich contact popup as the Logbook map, including country flag, country/grid, callsign, operator name, frequency, mode, and date when available.

POTA Detail Spotter Map​

When you open a live POTA activation from the Hunting view, the embedded map inside the detail modal progressively draws arcs from the selected park out to every locatable spotter that reported the activator. The label above the map shows how many of the reporting spotters are on the map so far (e.g. Showing 21 of 22 spotters). Already-mapped glyphs stay visible through provider backoff or a service interruption, and quota pauses resume automatically. Spotters that can't be located are quietly left off the map — reopening the activation tries again. A callbook that can't place an operator's address — a PO box, a military APO/FPO address, an incomplete record — sometimes reports a placeholder position instead of leaving the field blank. Hamtrax counts that as unlocated and leaves the spotter off, so no arc points at open water where nobody is transmitting and the distances in the list view stay truthful. Reports are scoped by program, park, and activator so the same operator appearing at two parks cannot mix spotters between modals.

On desktop, hovering over a spotter is preview-only: it does not hide markers or reframe the map. Clicking pins the popup. On touch, the first tap pins that same popup and starts the focused frame immediately — there is no preview-only tap first.

Every glyph on that map is identifiable, not just plotted. Hover over a spotter marker for their country flag and country, city or grid square, callsign, and operator name; hover over the activator's gray pin at the park for the same details about the station being chased. Clicking either one pins its popup. It begins closing as soon as you press empty map space — even if that press becomes a drag — and also closes when you choose another marker or press Escape. When a spotter popup is pinned, every other spotter and arc fades away; the selected spotter, the activator's gray park pin, and their connecting arc remain. The map uses the tightest frame that keeps both glyphs and the complete popup inside its edges, and pauses progressive all-spotter reframing until the popup closes. Closing it restores the original activator-plus-all-spotters overview. Country resolves 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 spotters from anywhere on the air read with the right country and flag.