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Maps Overview

Hamtrax gives you two ways to visualize live ham radio activity: an interactive 2D map and a stacked list view. Both live inside the Hunt Contacts tab and share the same real-time spot data, so you always see the two views together.

What the Map Shows​

The Hunt Contacts map renders POTA (Parks on the Air) activations as park markers. Marker color reflects the activation's status — default, hunted, attempted, or marked for retry. Hamtrax also renders maps in other places: the Logbook tab plots your logged QSOs with great-circle arc lines, ongoing activation maps draw logged-contact arcs back to your activation park anchor, and the POTA activation detail modal progressively draws arcs from a park out to its locatable spotters. Those views are covered in their own sections of the docs.

Switching Views​

The map and the list aren't two separate modes — they're laid out together:

  1. Open the Hunt Contacts tab.
  2. On wide screens (tablet and up), the list panel sits to the left of the map.
  3. On narrow screens, the list overlays the map and you can collapse or expand it with the floating chevron above the panel's bottom edge (drag the chevron up/down or tap to toggle).

On wide screens, hovering over an activator marker highlights its list card and scrolls that card into view by default. Turn off Settings > Preferences > Map > Auto-scroll activator list to keep the list in place; map-to-list highlighting still works.

[SCREENSHOT: Hunt Contacts tab showing 2D map with spot markers]

What You'll See​

The map displays live POTA activations as colored park markers. On a hover device, tapping a marker opens the activation detail modal directly. On touch devices, tapping a marker first raises a popup with the spot's label and a see details link so you can read what you tapped before opening the full modal.

Map Controls​

A small floating pill at the bottom-center of the map lets you recenter on the current map anchor, zoom in or out without pinching, and access hunting-only map tools like the center-location pin. See the 2D Map page for details.

Marker Clustering​

When you're zoomed out, nearby spots are grouped into clusters to keep the map readable. Each cluster shows a count of how many spots it contains. Zoom in or tap the cluster to expand it and see individual markers.

Day/Night Overlay​

The 2D map shows a real-time day/night overlay. The shaded region represents nighttime, and the faint twilight band around the terminator marks the gray-line zone -- a prime zone for enhanced propagation on HF.

info

The gray-line band updates automatically every minute. It's especially useful for DXers looking to take advantage of twilight propagation paths.

Reception Footprint (PSK Reporter)​

On the POTA hunting map you can toggle a reception footprint -- the stations that recently reported hearing you, pulled from PSK Reporter -- so you can confirm at a glance that your signal is getting out. See the 2D Map page for details.

Connection Lines​

When the map is rendering your logged QSOs (for example, in the Logbook tab's map view), it draws great-circle arc lines between your station location and each contact's location. During an ongoing activation, the activation park is the single anchor for the self glyph, camera/recenter target, and logged-contact arcs; logged-contact markers use the same rich contact popup as Logbook markers, while spotter-only markers stay marker-only.

Stacked List View​

If you prefer browsing spots without focusing on the map, the stacked list view shows activity as a scrollable, filterable list. You can filter by band or mode and tap any item to see its full details. The list view is always available alongside the map — they share the screen rather than swapping in and out.

  • 2D Map -- Pan, zoom, and explore activity on the interactive flat map.
  • Hunting -- Learn how hunting live POTA spots works.
  • Preferences -- Configure map display settings.