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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, tapping a spot marker opens the detail modal directly. On touch devices, the first tap raises a popup with the spot's label and a see details link so you can read what you tapped before committing to the full modal.
  5. Hover over a Hunt marker -- On wide screens, hovering over an activator marker highlights its card in the list and scrolls that card into view by default. Turn off Settings > Preferences > Map > Auto-scroll activator list to keep the list still without turning off the matching highlight.

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

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.

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.

[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 Hunt Contacts tab — POTA 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.

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.

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. Your station location is resolved from the QSO's stored coordinates or from the associated POTA park reference.

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 derived from the QSO's stored coordinates or associated POTA park reference. 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.

Visited Countries (Logbook map)​

When the map is rendering your logged QSOs, countries you've worked (from your DXCC list) are highlighted with a subtle fill and outline overlay. US state boundaries are also displayed for additional geographic context.

Activation Setup Mode​

Before you start a POTA activation, a Select a Park hint pill animates above the map until a park is chosen -- either auto-filled from your location when you're within about half a mile of a park, or picked by you. 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.

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; quota pauses resume automatically, and offline/service failures offer Retry mapping. Reports are scoped by program, park, and activator so the same operator appearing at two parks cannot mix spotters between modals.