Preferences
The Preferences page lets you customize Hamtrax to fit your operating style. From profile identity to subscription management, everything is accessible from a single place.
Accessing Preferences
- Open Settings from the sidebar.
- Navigate between tabs: Account, Preferences, Plans, Radio Control, and Help.
Account
The Account tab starts with your Get Started checklist, followed by profile identity, security settings, and account actions.
Get Started Checklist
The animated percentage bar matches the floating onboarding banner and updates as soon as you import contacts, log a native hunted POTA contact, create radio and antenna profiles, or tap Share on a contact map. Tap any task dot for exact steps and a direct action button; tasks can be completed in any order.
Hamtrax waits until your account preferences and logbook are ready before showing this card. It starts expanded while work remains and collapsed after all six tasks are complete. It remains available here after completion and even if you permanently hide the floating banner.
Profile Identity
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Photo | Upload a profile photo (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC, or HEIF). Images are automatically resized before upload, so there's no fixed file-size limit. |
| Callsign | Your amateur radio callsign. Looked up through Hamtrax's callsign lookup as you type. |
| Name | Your display name as it appears across the app. |
| Username | A unique @username others can search for. |
See Changing Your Profile for exactly what happens across the app when you edit each of these fields.
Plan
A summary of your current subscription plan. Founders see their founder number and lifetime status. Paid subscribers see their plan tier and renewal date. Free users see a prompt to view available plans.
Security
For email/password accounts, you can change your password or change your email. OAuth users (Google, Apple) see a notice that credentials are managed by their provider.
Changing your password here requires your current one. If you can't sign in at all, use Forgot password? on the sign-in screen instead — see I Can't Sign In.
Account Actions
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Sign out | Sign out of your account on this device. |
| Delete account | Permanently delete your authentication profile and server-stored integration credentials. Before removing sign-in access, Hamtrax closes unfinished Stripe Checkout Sessions, immediately cancels every recurring or trialing Stripe subscription linked to the account, and confirms billing has stopped; if Stripe cannot confirm that, the account is not deleted. Cancellation does not automatically issue a refund or prorated credit. App Store subscriptions must still be canceled separately in Apple Subscriptions. Hamtrax removes the email address from the retained profile and stops automated activity and product emails. Contact logs and other logbook data are preserved and become inaccessible through that account. |
Preferences
The Preferences tab contains Language, Station, Map, Notifications, Contact Entry, Logbook, Hunting, My Activations, and Integrations. Inside Notifications, the Push notifications toggle appears only in the iOS app; the email switches appear on every platform.
Language
Choose the language Hamtrax displays in — English, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, French, or Korean. Selection is saved to your account so it persists across devices.
Station
The Station section includes band plan and location settings.
Band Plan
Your default regulatory agency and license class determine frequency allocations and mode suggestions throughout the app. They also drive the band-plan warning triangles on Hunt spots.
| Agency | Region |
|---|---|
| FCC -- United States | IARU Region 2 |
| ISED / RAC -- Canada | IARU Region 2 |
| IARU Region 1 -- Europe & Africa | IARU Region 1 |
| ACMA -- Australia | IARU Region 3 |
Hamtrax auto-detects these from your callsign — whether you provide it at signup or add it later in Settings → Account — but you can change them anytime. If you have no callsign on file, no band plan is set until you pick one here. If your agency issues only one license class, the license class field shows "Not applicable" and is deactivated, with a short note underneath explaining why.
Location
Hamtrax uses your location to find nearby parks, stations, and repeaters. You can control how your location is determined:
| Mode | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Callsign | Location is derived from Hamtrax's callsign lookup. Some registrations carry no position a map can use — a PO box, a military APO/FPO address, an incomplete record — and for those this mode is unavailable and the picker tells you to use Device or Manual instead. |
| Device | Uses your device's GPS for real-time location. Requires location permission. |
| Manual | You set coordinates, a grid square, or search for a place — cities as well as parks and landmarks. Optionally set an expiration (1, 4, 8, or 24 hours) or choose "Never Revert" to keep the manual location indefinitely. |
Your grid square is calculated automatically from your coordinates, or you can enter it manually in Manual mode.
Manual grid entry accepts 4-, 6-, or 8-character Maidenhead locators. From the third through sixth character, Hamtrax offers up to five likely six-character matches and narrows the list as you type. Suggestions are optional: any valid locator can still be entered.
Your chosen method never changes by itself. If your selected method doesn't have data yet — say GPS permission is still pending, or your callsign is still resolving — Hamtrax quietly uses the best available source in the meantime and shows a notice in the location picker explaining what it's doing.
Callsign-based location is a good default if you operate from a fixed station. Switch to Device mode for portable or mobile operations.
Map
The Map section controls interactive-map city names, marker sizes, and how Hunting maps keep their lists in sync.
Major City Names
Major city names is on by default. Hamtrax starts with cities above 10 million people at world zoom, then lowers the population threshold through 5 million, 2 million, 1 million, and 250,000 as you zoom in. A small dot anchors each displayed name at the city's coordinates; MapLibre hides the name and dot together when they would overlap another label.
The preference applies to interactive Hunt, Activate, Logbook, park, and signal report maps. The public Profile World Coverage visualization stays unchanged. On maps that crossfade to detailed OpenStreetMap tiles, turning the preference off hides only Hamtrax's overview names and coordinate dots; place names baked into those detailed tiles remain visible. Signal report maps keep the Hamtrax labels at focused zooms because they do not use that raster layer.
Marker Sizes
Each marker type can be set to Small, Medium, or Large:
| Marker | Description |
|---|---|
| POTA markers | Parks on the Air park markers. |
| Contact markers | Markers for logged contacts. |
Hunting Map Hover
Auto-scroll activator list is on by default. On wide screens, hovering over a marker on any Hunting map scrolls the list on the left to the matching item. Turn this setting off to keep the list in place while you explore the map; the matching marker and list item still highlight each other.
Notifications
One place for everything Hamtrax sends you.
Push notifications — iOS app only. Receive Hamtrax announcements on this device.
Every automated email Hamtrax can send has its own switch, on every platform:
| What it is | |
|---|---|
| Nearby activations | Someone is activating a park near your callsign location. |
| Parks near me | A one-time email listing the closest POTA parks to your location. |
| Product announcements | New Hamtrax features and releases. |
| Review requests | The occasional ask to review Hamtrax on the App Store. |
Changes save to your account immediately and follow you across devices.
Account and security emails — password resets, and notices about your account such as a Pro grant — are always sent and have no switch.
Unsubscribing from the email itself
Every one of those emails carries an Unsubscribe or change which emails you get link in its footer, and Gmail and Yahoo show their own one-click unsubscribe control at the top of the message. Both work without signing in.
The link opens a Hamtrax page listing the same four emails with checkboxes. Untick what you don't want and choose Save preferences, or choose Turn off all Hamtrax emails to silence all four at once. These are the same settings shown here in Settings, so a change made either way shows up in both.
The page never shows your email address or callsign, and the link doesn't expire — one from an old archived message still works. Your mail provider's one-click control silences only the type of email you used it from, leaving the others on.
Contact Entry
Helpers for typing contacts into your log.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Callsign number row | On by default. In the live activation Add Contact panel on a touchscreen, a 0–9 key row floats directly above the on-screen keyboard so digits go in without switching to the number layout. Turn it off to use the keyboard's own number layer instead. The row does not appear in sign-up, Settings, the Logbook, Hunt, or other callsign fields. |
Logbook
How dates and times read in your logbook.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Show my local time | Off by default. Contacts are logged and organized in UTC — the ham radio standard — so contact rows display the UTC day and 24-hour time (e.g. 02:22z, the z being ham shorthand for Zulu/UTC) their folders are keyed by, and a row can never look like it landed in the wrong month. Hover over a row's time to see it in your local timezone. Turn this on to read contact rows in your local timezone on a 12-hour clock instead, with the UTC value moving to the hover tooltip. The date-range filter and exports always window on UTC days, matching the labels. Display-only: stored dates, folder names, ADIF/CSV export values, and the auto-organization guardrails stay UTC either way. Saved to your account, so it follows you across devices. |
Hunting
Controls for the hunting programs — Parks on the Air, DX Chasing, and Repeaters.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Band plan warnings | On by default. Flags any spot whose frequency falls outside your band plan with an orange warning triangle on the spot row, in the activation detail modal, in the DX country detail view beside the station's frequency and mode, and in the map popup. Turn it off to hide the triangles. Warnings appear only when you have a band plan on file — see Band Plan. |
| Hunt panel defaults → Mode | The mode that program's Hunt panel mode filter starts on each time you open it. No default — every mode shows — for Parks on the Air and DX Chasing, on new and existing accounts; the Repeaters row arrives pre-set instead (below). Pick SSB, CW, FT8, FT4, FM, RTTY, PSK, AM, JT65, or SSTV and the panel opens filtered to it. Change it under Filters in the panel and that change holds while you stay in the tab; your default returns the next time you open it. A Parks on the Air default other than FT8 also leaves FT8 Auto-Hunt with no targets until you widen the filter. |
| Hunt panel defaults → Band | The band that program's Hunt panel band filter starts on each time you open it. No default — every band shows — for Parks on the Air and DX Chasing, on new and existing accounts. Pick any band the hunt filter offers (160m, 80m, 60m, 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, 10m, 6m, 2m, or 70cm) and the panel opens filtered to it, with the same override behavior as Mode. |
Hunt panel defaults shows one Mode/Band pair per hunt program — Parks on the Air, DX Chasing, and Repeaters each keep their own, and any future program gets its own row. The bands you chase countries on aren't usually the bands you hunt parks on, so switching hunt tabs swaps in that program's saved pair. A default you saved before DX Chasing existed carries over as your Parks on the Air pair; DX Chasing starts clean.
Repeaters is the one row that doesn't start blank: Hamtrax ships it set to 2m / FM, the band and mode nearly all repeater work happens on. Change it or clear it exactly like the others — once you save the row, your value is the one that sticks, and clearing it stays cleared rather than snapping back to 2m/FM. The Repeaters hunt surface lists the repeaters near you rather than a live spot feed, so it carries no filter bar of its own; the pair you save here is that program's stored default.
Neither default changes what Clear does in the panel — it removes the current band and mode filters rather than falling back to or changing your saved default. The separate Last Spotted window stays as set.
My Activations
These settings affect contact logging in your activations — the live activation logger and the quick-add card on a finished activation folder. They don't change the full QSO form, hunt logging, or import defaults.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Auto-detect Park to Park | On by default. While you're activating, fills the Their park field automatically when exactly one recent activity program and reference match the station you're logging -- and logging that contact posts a courtesy P2P spot for them on POTA.app. If several identities match, the field stays blank for you to choose. Turning it off stops only the automatic fill and its courtesy spot: Their park stays right there in the Add Contact card, and a park you type in yourself is never spotted for the other station. See Park-to-Park. |
| Pre-fill perfect signal reports | On by default. Activation contact forms start at 59 (phone) / 599 (CW and other RST modes). Turn it off and both report fields start unset — POTA doesn't require signal reports, so a contact saves with none unless you set one while logging or by editing the contact later. Unset reports show as dim dashes instead of digits, and exports simply omit the report fields. |
The spot visibility window (how recent a spot must be to show) is not here — it lives in the hunting panel's recency filter, which is its single source of truth. The Spot toggle in the Hunt configuration card (which posts a confirming hunter spot to POTA.app when you tap Contacted on an activator) also lives in the hunting tab itself; it defaults to on each session and is intentionally not persisted.
There is no auto-close toggle either. Idle activations always close after 24 hours without a new contact — it isn't optional, because an open activation is what hunted contacts file into — and what suppresses repeater logging — so a session left open for weeks would keep claiming contacts you made from home and keep the Repeaters tab shut. See Idle activations close themselves.
Integrations
The Integrations section owns setup for external logbook services. Each integration is its own expandable panel.
| Service | What linking does |
|---|---|
| N1MM Logger+ | Stores the bridge settings intended for live contest logging. This is not a bulk history import, and saving the panel does not by itself establish an active ingestion connection. |
| Logbook of The World | Stores your ARRL LoTW credentials. Hamtrax can pull QSL confirmations from LoTW and apply them to matching local contacts. Submitting contacts to LoTW still requires exporting an ADIF and uploading via TQSL. |
| QRZ Logbook | Connects one QRZ Logbook API key so Hamtrax can import QRZ contacts. An Auto-Push New Contacts toggle sends each new contact you log to QRZ automatically; it is the only way Hamtrax sends contacts to QRZ. |
| HamQTH Logbook | Stores your HamQTH.com credentials and lets Hamtrax push contacts up to your HamQTH logbook. |
| POTA | Parks on the Air. No credentials required — Hamtrax uses official POTA data. |
Each connector displays its current setup or connection state.
Selecting Connect or Manage for one of these services from the Import Contacts Import from connection screen returns here, expands the exact connector, and scrolls it into view.
QRZ is a connect-once integration. Hamtrax validates the API key before encrypting it for server-side storage; the stored key is never sent back to the app. After that, QRZ import and upload work anywhere you are signed in to the same Hamtrax account, with no vault passphrase or unlock step. Replace API key validates a new key before replacing the current connection, while Disconnect removes the stored key. While connected, Auto-Push New Contacts keeps that QRZ logbook in step with new contacts, edits, and deletes — Exporting has the exact rules. The toggle is per-logbook: connecting a different logbook's key switches it off until you enable it again. See Import from QRZ for direct-connection and file-export instructions.
POTA Park Database
This section also hosts the POTA Park Database card, which manages the park catalog stored on your device for instant, offline park lookups. The Hamtrax cloud copy checks POTA about hourly, and a new account opened online starts with the current list. The card shows how many parks this device has stored, your dataset version next to the latest available one, and — when a newer dataset exists — how many more parks the newer database contains than your local copy.
Auto-update parks database is on by default. When a signed-in device detects that its local copy is stale while online, it quietly downloads and imports the newer dataset. The preference follows your Hamtrax account, but every device keeps and refreshes its own offline database. Turning it off stops future automatic download attempts; it does not remove parks already stored or cancel a refresh already underway. When automatic updates are off or a refresh cannot complete, the next eligible signed-in, online app open retains the update reminder and its Settings shortcut, shown at most once a week. Drop & refresh remains available regardless of the auto-update setting to pull the latest dataset to the current device immediately.
App Store review prompt
On the iOS app, Hamtrax occasionally asks Enjoying Hamtrax? after a good session — once you have 20 real hunted contacts behind you, or right after finishing an activation of ten or more. Yes, loving it opens the App Store review sheet; Not really opens the in-app feedback form instead. The prompt appears at most once a week, waits 90 days after you answer either way, and stops on its own if you close it three times in a row. Don't ask me again, inside the prompt itself, turns it off permanently — that opt-out is separate from the Review requests email switch under Notifications. The web app never shows the prompt.
Radio Control
The Radio Control tab is where Hamtrax connects to a supported rig for live radio state. Radio control is native iOS only because the browser cannot open the raw Wi-Fi socket the radio uses.
| Platform | What You See |
|---|---|
| Browser / web | An iOS-only card with an App Store link. The page stops there so the unavailable status, diagnostic, and troubleshooting panels do not appear on web. |
| Native iOS app | Radio and connection-method selection, connection setup, live status, diagnostic log tools, how-it-connects details, and troubleshooting. |
Set up control in the same order you experience it:
- Select your radio from Hamtrax's tested-radio catalog.
- Select one of the connection methods available for that radio.
- Optionally choose that radio/method's Waterfall display and frequency-step preferences.
- Complete the Connection setup shown for that method and connect.
The first available combination is Icom IC-705 → Direct Wi-Fi. Join the IC-705's Wi-Fi hotspot on your iPhone, then enter its Network User credentials in Hamtrax. Other radios and connection methods will appear in the catalog only after Hamtrax supports and tests them.
After a connection succeeds, Hamtrax remembers that radio and method on this device. With Auto-connect on app open enabled, it reconnects to that last successfully connected radio when its network is available. Merely viewing another radio or a failed connection attempt does not replace the saved target.
Waterfall
Connections that provide genuine RF-scope samples can show a spectrum and waterfall docked across the bottom of the app. The Waterfall card appears before the selected method's Connection card. Turn on Show waterfall, optionally turn on Show filter bandwidth, choose a half-span of ±2.5, ±5, ±10, ±20, ±40, or ±80 kHz, and choose a Frequency step of 1, 10, or 100 Hz, or 1 or 10 kHz. Show waterfall and Show filter bandwidth are off by default; span defaults to ±10 kHz and frequency step to 100 Hz. The same waterfall on/off control appears when you expand the green connected-radio icon in the navbar. When an enabled connection is confirmed again—even to the same radio and method—the dock reacquires its live spectrum session without requiring an app restart.
Once the dock is open, one bottom-left Controls menu keeps adjustments out of the signal view. It contains Span, Frequency step, a truly continuous Sensitivity slider, a continuous color-track Noise Floor (Visual Only) slider, optional Logarithmic colors with a continuous Log anchor, a centered two-ended Color range slider, and Show filter bandwidth. Move Noise Floor right to hide waterfall colors weaker than the selected threshold; the leftmost Show all position is the default. It affects only the colored waterfall history—not the live green spectrum trace, receiver audio, radio RF gain, or scope settings.
Logarithmic colors is off by default. When enabled, it compresses weaker colors and gives the strongest signals more color separation. The Log anchor is expressed directly as “signal percentage → middle color”: its 75% default means a 75%-strength relative sample reaches the middle palette color, leaving half of the color variation for the strongest quarter of the normalized range. Moving it toward Balanced approaches a linear scale; moving it toward Strongest signals reserves progressively more of the palette for only the strongest samples. The Color range track reads Weak signals to Strong signals; moving either endpoint mirrors the other, with a narrower range making their colors more similar and a wider range increasing their difference. Sensitivity, noise-floor, log, log-anchor, and color-range changes immediately recolor the retained raw history instead of emptying the waterfall and waiting for it to refill.
The carrier and compact confirmed frequency stay fixed at the center, with the radio's confirmed mode shown beneath it. Tap the scope to tune there, or drag horizontally to move the complete spectrum and its history beneath the center marker; the preview and final target snap to the nearest selected frequency step, and Hamtrax sends one tune command when you release. Left and right chevrons beside the confirmed frequency tune exactly one selected step per press. Changing frequency or span also reprojects the retained raw history into the new view, cropping or blanking only the RF region that cannot overlap.
Waterfall on/off, filter shading, span, sensitivity, noise floor, logarithmic-color choice, log anchor, color range, and frequency step are stored on this device for each radio and connection method. The dock consumes Radio Control's shared spectrum contract: every supporting backend supplies its own RF bounds, bin count, and normalized relative levels, while radio-specific formats stay inside that adapter. Filter shading uses a separate shared rxPassband reading with signed edges relative to the carrier; it appears only when the connected backend can confirm that geometry rather than guessing. IC-705 Direct Wi-Fi is the first adapter. CAT alone does not imply either capability: the live waterfall/status control requires confirmed spectrum support, while only the filter-shading control requires rxPassband. A method without spectrum support says Not available for this connection. Levels are relative, not calibrated dBm.
Until the first valid sweep arrives, the dock says Waiting for spectrum data… and leaves history blank instead of inventing rows. If RF frames arrive before the separate confirmed dial readback, their own RF bounds can already draw the scope while the header says Waiting for confirmed radio frequency…; tuning controls appear when that confirmed frequency arrives. If the trace is active but the colored history looks empty, move Noise Floor (Visual Only) toward Show all to restore weaker colors. If the spectrum-data message persists, sensitivity and noise floor are not the issue; open Diagnostic log under Radio Control and include its scope lines when submitting feedback.
An FT8-capable connection also unlocks FT8 Auto-Hunt on the hunting activator list -- a card that works FT8 activators hands-free through the rig. If a future connection method provides CAT control without FT8, it will show only the controls it supports. See FT8 Auto-Hunt for how it targets, transmits, and logs.
While connected, the navbar shows a radio status pill: a green computer icon at rest ("Connected"), switching to a pulsing red tower ("Transmitting") whenever the rig is actually keyed -- confirmed by the rig itself, so you always know when your transmitter is on the air, from anywhere in the app.
For the IC-705 Direct Wi-Fi method, the connection stays alive in the background -- indefinitely. Switch to any other app for as long as you like and your radio stays connected. Hamtrax does this by quietly running the radio's receiver audio through a silent, always-on playback engine, which keeps iOS from suspending the app. You'll never hear it and there's nothing to configure. If the waterfall is enabled, Hamtrax pauses waveform output and restores the radio's leased scope settings while backgrounded, then reacquires them on return.
If that engine ever can't run -- a phone call or Siri interrupts it while you're away, or the audio channel drops -- Hamtrax falls back to a safety net: it holds the session about 20 seconds, then closes it cleanly so the radio frees its single connection slot instead of holding a dead session hostage. The moment you return, Hamtrax reconnects on its own -- no radio restart, no manual reconnect -- and recovers the link even if it died while you were gone.
On a normal waterfall stop, background transition, or disconnect while CI-V is still reachable, Hamtrax restores only scope values that still match what it applied, preserving any front-panel change you made. If Wi-Fi or radio power disappears first, it does not guess at a delayed restoration on a later connection.
Help
The Help tab gives you quick access to onboarding and support:
| Card | Description |
|---|---|
| Hunting walkthrough | Replay the guided first-run walkthrough that teaches how the app fits together -- making contacts in Hunting or Activating, then keeping them all in your Logbook -- by working a synthetic practice activator end to end. |
| Open docs | Jump to this documentation site. |
| Submit feedback | Open the in-app feedback form to report a bug or request a feature. On iOS, answering Not really to the Enjoying Hamtrax? prompt opens the same form. |
Plans
The Plans tab shows your current plan, trial or renewal date, and the billing management action for the store where you subscribed.
- On web and Android, regular Pro Monthly Checkout starts a 61-day trial and automatically becomes paid unless canceled before the displayed trial end date. Pro Annual and Lifetime are charged at Checkout; promotional offers can have different terms.
- A Hamtrax account can have only one pending Checkout or live Stripe subscription. Hamtrax reuses that account's billing profile and refuses a second purchase while Checkout or recurring billing is already active—even from another device. A subscription scheduled to cancel stays live until its displayed end date.
- A plan labeled Trial becomes paid on the date shown unless you open Manage subscription and cancel it before then.
- Lifetime cannot be purchased while a monthly or annual plan can still bill. The Lifetime card's button reads Cancel subscription first and opens your billing portal (or iOS Settings → Subscriptions) instead of starting a purchase. Once the current period ends, return to the Plans tab to buy Lifetime.
- If a conflicting legacy Checkout nevertheless completes, Hamtrax cancels the extra recurring subscription and initiates a full refund of anything paid through that rejected Checkout. Stripe and your financial institution control when the credit appears.
- Delete account immediately cancels and confirms Stripe recurring billing before sign-in access is removed. Apple subscriptions and trials remain Apple-managed and must be canceled in Apple Subscriptions.
Related Pages
- Changing Your Profile -- what changes when you edit your photo, callsign, name, or username
- Your Showcase -- your public operator profile
- Solar Dashboard -- see current propagation conditions
- Band Plan -- uses your agency and license class preferences