Rig Manager
Rig Manager keeps your radios and antennas organized so Hamtrax can attach the right equipment to contacts, activations, and your public Showcase.
Rig Manager opens from wherever you pick equipment. The Radio and Antenna controls under My Station in Hunt, the equipment rows in activation setup, a running activation's Radio / Antenna section, and the equipment fields on a contact all open My Radios or My Antennas; Bulk Edit's Change Radio and Change Antenna open those same two pickers. From there, Add Radio or Add Antenna creates a profile, and Configure on a saved card opens it for editing.
When you open a form from an equipment picker, saving or deleting closes the form and reopens that picker, with a newly created profile already selected; Back in the form's header does the same without saving. Closing the form with its ✕ simply dismisses it. Equipment cards on your own Showcase skip the picker and open the profile's form directly.
Inside a folder on your own Showcase, choose an item under Equipment used to view its details. If it is still saved in your account, Edit beside the title opens the matching radio or antenna form; Back or Save returns to refreshed details, while Delete returns to the folder. Visitors and equipment retained only in contact history get a read-only view.
Add and edit forms use Radio profile or Antenna profile for identity, then Operating capabilities for specifications. Radio Accessories and Notes stay below.
The antenna form starts with Nickname. On wide screens, antenna type, manufacturer, and model sit beside the photo; on narrow screens, the photo follows the operating details. Bands & performance, Measured SWR, Physical specs, Feedline, and Deployment notes use full-width rows. Open one to edit it; the other rows close.
Picking a known model
When Manufacturer matches one of its suggestions, Model suggests that maker's models. Pick one and Hamtrax fills in what it knows about that model — a radio's rig type, Max Power (W), and supported modes and bands, or an antenna's type, pattern, bands, polarization, and impedance — leaving alone anything you have already changed in the form.
Power
A radio profile carries one Max Power (W) field in Operating capabilities, alongside Modes & bands. It is the only place Hamtrax records watts, so there is no power field on a contact form or in activation setup: every contact you log with that radio saves the value sitting here. Picking a known model fills Max Power in with that model's rated maximum.
Max Power is sticky. Set it once — here, or on the radio's own card in any equipment picker — and it stays set for the next contact and every one after it, until you change it again. Changing it in this form updates the radio's saved value; it never rewrites contacts you have already logged.
Recording radio accessories
A radio profile can include accessories that belong with the setup, such as a battery pack, key, interface, or cable. Give each accessory a name and use the optional notes for details such as cable length, adapter type, or setup reminders.
Select Essential for this setup to record that the item is part of your standard kit. This is descriptive information only: it does not block saving or logging, and Hamtrax does not treat it as a packing checklist.
Choosing what you are using now
Rig Manager is your equipment inventory; it does not have default switches. Choose a radio or antenna from the picker in Parks on the Air, DX Chasing, Repeaters, Activate, or a new-contact form when you are ready to use it. That choice becomes your current equipment everywhere in Hamtrax, so switching tabs never shows a conflicting setup.
Your current selection is saved to your account, but each new contact records its own snapshot. Changing gear later does not rewrite older contacts, and editing an older contact does not change what is currently selected. If you delete the selected profile, Hamtrax clears that current selection instead of silently choosing another profile. Historical contacts keep their saved radio or antenna text, so deleting a profile does not erase what you used for past QSOs. Deleting a profile also takes its photo, schematics, and mod-log photos out of Rig Manager and your Showcase; the uploaded files themselves are retained rather than erased.
Equipment photos
Radio and antenna profiles accept JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, and HEIF images up to 10 MB before processing. Choosing a photo, including Change photo, opens Adjust photo with 16:9 Suggested selected. Choose Original to keep the whole photo, or Free crop for a custom shape. Drag the crop or use the arrow keys to move it; in Free crop, drag a corner or use Shift + arrow keys to resize. Zoom tightens the crop.
Use photo updates the form's local preview. Cancel or closing Adjust photo keeps the preceding photo. The photo uploads only when you Save the equipment profile; leaving the form without saving discards the pending change. Equipment detail windows and the editing preview show the complete chosen photo within their frame.
Cropping and saving require your browser to open the file. If it cannot, which can happen with HEIC or HEIF, the dialog offers Original but saving still needs a compatible browser; use a JPEG, PNG, or WebP copy instead. Hamtrax resizes and compresses photos during upload.
If a file is too large or uses an unsupported format, the form explains why it was rejected. Upload and deletion failures also show an error instead of silently leaving the profile unchanged.
Homebrew schematics and mod log
Setting a radio's Source to Homebrew adds two more places to keep build documentation. Both stay private to your account — unlike equipment photos, neither appears on your public Showcase.
- Schematics — Choose Schematics in the homebrew section to attach build documents, as many as you need. Hamtrax accepts PDF, PNG, JPEG, and WebP files up to 25 MB each. This picker is stricter than the photo pickers elsewhere in Hamtrax: HEIC and HEIF are not accepted, so an iPhone photo of a schematic has to be converted first. A file that is too large or the wrong format is refused with a message naming the reason.
- Mod log — Record what you have changed since the build, one entry per modification, each with a date, a description, an optional category (Replaced part, Added feature, Calibration, Fix, or Cosmetic), and one optional photo. Mod-log photos accept JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF, and GIF with no fixed size limit, because each one is resized and compressed before it uploads.
Schematics and mod-log photos upload when you save the profile, not when you pick them, so leaving the form without saving discards them.
Where equipment appears
Saved equipment is available in contact forms, activation setup, hunting, and the logbook's bulk equipment editor. Every equipment picker also has a clear Add Radio or Add Antenna button, so you can create the right profile on the spot — Hamtrax brings you back with the new profile selected. Your public Showcase can also display equipment cards; tapping your own card opens it for editing in Rig Manager, while visitors get a read-only detail view.
Inside My Radios and My Antennas, each saved profile is a card. A checkbox in the card's top-right corner marks the one you are using: check it to select that profile, check it again to deselect. Tapping anywhere else on the card does the same thing, and a fresh selection closes the picker a moment later. Configure in the card's footer opens that profile's full Rig Manager form.
A radio card also shows its Power below its identity and above the Configure footer. On the selected radio it is a small … W field you can type into; every other card shows its watts as plain text, and selecting that card turns the text into the field. Type a value and leave the field, or press Enter, and it saves to the radio straight away; closing the picker while you are still in the field saves it too. This is the same value as the Rig Manager form's Max Power (W) field, so setting it here sets it everywhere. If the save cannot go through — you are offline, say — the field returns to the saved watts and Hamtrax tells you it could not save.