Version 5.18.1 · updated for the QRZ logbook lookup, Known Hunters community widget, DX‑cluster monitoring, the [PW] community tag and network‑health pausing.

What's new since the first release

If you're returning to ParkWatch, these are the features added recently — each is covered in full in its own section below:

• QRZ logbook lookup — when you look up a call (Manual QSO or the Activator Log), ParkWatch shows how many times you've worked them and your last three QSOs, read from your QRZ logbook. See Logging.
• Known Hunters widget — a sidebar panel that surfaces spots from operators you follow, and from anyone spotting through ParkWatch. See Known Hunters.
• DX‑cluster monitoring — watch a telnet DX cluster for IOTA references, specific callsigns or comment keywords. See DX‑cluster monitoring.
• The [PW] community tag — spots you post carry a small marker so other ParkWatch users recognise them. See Spotting.
• Network‑health pausing — when you're offline or on a slow link, external lookups pause and a banner warns you. See Network health.
• Short‑ and long‑path beam headings — every beam heading now shows both SP and LP bearings.

Contents

1. Opening ParkWatch
2. The spot list
3. Filtering
4. Working a station
5. Stations To Work queue
6. The map
7. Spotting
8. Logging
9. Alerts
10. Rig control
11. Sidebar, top activators and the ticker
12. Activator Log
13. Past activations
14. Keeping ParkWatch updated
15. Backup & restore
16. Settings reference
17. Troubleshooting
18. Known Hunters & community
19. DX‑cluster monitoring
20. Network health

1. Opening ParkWatch

Click the ParkWatch icon in the Chrome toolbar. By default it opens in a new browser tab. Prefer a separate floating window? Settings → Station → Open ParkWatch in.

Either way, ParkWatch won't open twice — if it's already open, that tab or window is brought to the front.

2. The spot list

Each row is one spotted station:

[logo]  14.243   W1AW  SSB  NEW PARK  ×3       [＋] [QSY] [Log] [Spot] [Park] [QRZ]
        20m      🇺🇸 US-0001 ＋KFF-1234  Acadia National Park  US-ME  412 km NE  4m

• Logo — POTA, WWFF, LLOTA, or the combined mark for a dual park.
• Frequency and band, callsign, mode.
• NEW PARK / NEW STATE / NEW DXCC — you've never worked this park, still need this US state, or still need this DXCC entity. Requires POTA award data (sign in at pota.app). NEW DXCC applies across POTA and WWFF.
• NEW REFERENCE — the WWFF equivalent of NEW PARK, once you've imported your WWFF log.
• ATNO — an all-time new one: this park has never been activated by anyone. RARE REFERENCE — nobody has activated it in the last two years. Both are about the park's rarity, independent of what you've worked.
• ×3 — how many times you've worked this park before.
• ＋KFF-1234 — a dual park: one QSO counts for both programs.
• Distance and bearing from your gridsquare, and how long ago it was spotted.

Which of these appear is up to you — Settings → Spots turns each flag on or off. What interrupts you with a notification is set separately in Settings → Alerts.

3. Filtering

Above the list:

• Search — matches callsign, reference, park name or location.
• Band and Mode dropdowns.
• Needed only — hide everything you've already worked.
• Hide hunted / Hide US / Hide POTA / Hide WWFF / Hide LLOTA.

Filters persist between sessions.

A park you click on the map is always shown, even if your filters would hide it — otherwise the highlight would go nowhere.

4. Working a station

Every action is available three ways: the row buttons, a right-click menu on any row, and the buttons on a queue entry. They all do the same thing.

5. Stations To Work queue

A panel in the sidebar, to the right of the spot list.

Adding: click ＋ on a row, or right-click → Add to queue.

Each entry shows callsign, frequency, reference, mode and park name, with its own Log / QSY / Spot buttons.

Queue entries survive the panel closing and the station dropping off the feed. A station no longer being spotted appears dimmed with a dashed border — it may have gone QRT, but its saved frequency still works.

If a queued station moves, you get a desktop notification and the entry shows a badge:

• amber QSY 14.243 → 14.250 — moved within the band
• red BAND CHANGE — changed band entirely (higher-priority alert)

Drift under 500 Hz is ignored. Turn these off in Settings → Alerts.

Logging or spotting a queued station removes it from the queue — you've worked it. Clear empties the queue.

6. The map

Click Map in the toolbar. It opens in its own tab.

Two views:

• On air now — currently spotted stations.
• All references — parks and lakes in the area you're looking at. These load for the visible area, so pan or zoom and more fill in. A loading indicator appears while POTA/WWFF data is fetched.

Pins: blue POTA, green WWFF, purple LLOTA. An amber ring means a park you've never hunted. A star is your home location.

Band and mode filters (On-air view): tap chips for 80m/40m/20m/17m/15m/12m/ 10m/6m and SSB/CW/FT8-FT4/Other. Multi-select — tap several. All clears.

Clicking a pin opens a popup with the program logo and details, and highlights that park in the ParkWatch spot list. From the popup you can Queue, Spot, Log, open the Park page, open QRZ, or Show in list (which also brings ParkWatch to the front). Hovering shows the popup; clicking pins it open so you can reach the buttons.

Moving the panel: drag the "ParkWatch Map" header anywhere on screen. Double-click it to snap back to the corner. Its position is remembered.

7. Spotting

Click Spot in the toolbar (self-spot) or on any row (re-spot).

"Spot On Your Favourite Programs" lets you post to several at once. Tick each program and give its reference:

• A dual park automatically posts to both POTA and WWFF — no double-posting.
• Typing a reference into the wrong row moves it to the right one automatically (LLOTA references identify themselves).
• Enabled DX clusters get the spot too.

Spots you post carry a discreet [PW] marker in the comment so other ParkWatch users can recognise them in their Known Hunters widget — a privacy‑respecting way to show you're on the air, with no central server. Turn it off in Settings → Spotting → When you spot. Park references are never dropped from spot comments: the cross‑reference is always kept in full and only the free‑text remark is trimmed if a cluster's length limit is reached.

Frequency accepts kHz or MHz — type 14243 or 14.243, and it echoes back what it understood plus the band.

Find references near me uses your device's actual location (not your home grid) to list the nearest POTA, WWFF and LLOTA references. Tap one to fill it in. It tells you whether it used the device fix or fell back to your grid.

LLOTA spotting needs two things: post one spot on llota.app yourself first (ParkWatch learns the request format by watching), and keep a signed-in llota.app tab open when you spot.

8. Logging

Click Log on any spot. The dialog is pre-filled from the spot.

"Spot this station too" is ticked by default — one click both spots and logs. Untick it when catching up on QSOs after the fact. If spotting fails, the QSO is still logged; you'll see both results.

Destinations (Settings → Logging), all optional and simultaneous:

The ADIF SIG field follows the program you chose, so POTA, WWFF and LLOTA QSOs are tagged correctly. Park references in comments are never truncated — spots keep the cross‑reference in full, and your logged ADIF comment is written verbatim.

Worked‑before lookup

Turn on Settings → Logging → QRZ Logbook → "Read my QRZ logbook" (you can leave uploading off) and enter your logbook API key. When you look up a callsign in the Manual QSO window or the Activator Log, ParkWatch shows how many times you've worked that operator and your last three QSOs with them — date, time, band and the comment from your log — read straight from QRZ. Portable calls are matched to the base call, so VE9CZ and VE9CZ/P count together. The Manual QSO window also shows the operator's QRZ profile photo.

9. Alerts

Settings → Alerts.

• Which flags interrupt you — new park, new state, new DXCC, ATNO and rare reference. This is separate from Settings → Spots: a flag can show in the list without also firing a notification.
• Mode groups and bands — only alert on what you can work.
• Maximum distance.
• Watchlist — always alert for these calls.
• Do-not-spot list — operators who've asked not to be re-spotted. Their Spot button is disabled.
• Queue QSY alerts — see section 5.

Phone alerts — ntfy (free, no account), Pushover, or your own webhook. You can cap alerts per hour, and optionally send only rare or only new-park alerts (handy for a group feed).

10. Rig control

Settings → Radio. ParkWatch talks TCI (WebSocket) directly to your radio software — no bridge needed. Once enabled, a QSY button appears on every spot and queue entry, and the Activator Log gains a Rig button that reads your current frequency straight off the radio.

11. Sidebar, top activators and the ticker

The sidebar runs down the right-hand side of the panel. Toggle it with the Sidebar button in the toolbar. Choose which panels appear, and in what order, under Settings → Station → Sidebar:

• Stations To Work queue — see section 5.
• Solar conditions — SFI, A and K indices at a glance.

Top activators sits below the queue: the five most active operators of the current UTC day, ranked by distinct parks activated, then spot count. Click one to filter the list to them. This is tallied by ParkWatch as it polls — it reflects the time ParkWatch was running, and resets at 00:00 UTC.

The ticker along the bottom scrolls scheduled activations for the next 7 days. Hover to pause, click an entry to open that park.

12. Activator Log

For when you're the one in the park. Click Activate in the ParkWatch toolbar; it opens in its own tab. The right-hand side has four tabs — Activation, Map, Stats and Solar.

Setting up the activation

On the Activation tab, fill in your callsign, grid, frequency and mode, then tick each program you're activating and give its reference. Activating POTA, WWFF and LLOTA at once is just three ticked rows. The Rig button reads the current frequency from your radio if rig control is on.

Find references near me uses your device's actual location — not your home grid — and lists the nearest references across all three programs. Tap one to fill it in; a two-fer fills its counterpart automatically, and the park name drops into the comment that goes on every contact.

Self-spot posts to every ticked program at once, plus your DX clusters. You spot once for the activation — logging a contact never re-spots you. When you're done, QRT posts a QRT spot so hunters know the activation has ended.

Logging contacts

Time is stamped in UTC automatically. Each contact is sent straight to whatever external logging you've set up — QRZ Logbook, Wavelog/Cloudlog, Station Master Pro or Log4OM over UDP — and appears in the session list below, newest first.

Duplicate detection: if you log the same callsign again on the same band, mode and park, the row is tagged DUP and you're warned. It's only a flag, not a block — work them again if you want; duplicates are counted separately in the stats and never break your export.

The session survives closing the tab, so a flat battery doesn't cost you the log.

Map and stats

• Map — a contacts map of the current activation, drawing a great-circle path from your location to every station you've worked. Expand opens it full-screen in its own tab. A contact is plotted once it has a gridsquare (QRZ lookup supplies these); ones without are counted but not drawn.
• Stats — running totals for the session: contact count, duplicates, a per-day breakdown, and the bands and modes you've used.
• Solar — current solar conditions, the same SFI/A/K panel as the main sidebar.

Importing and recovering

Import brings an existing ADIF in — either into the current activation or straight into the archive as a finished activation. Skip duplicates is on by default, so re-importing the same file won't double up your log. This is the way to bring in contacts you logged elsewhere (paper, another logger) and still get correct per-program ADIF out.

Recover a session rebuilds the current activation from ParkWatch's own local log if a tab was lost or closed before you finished — nothing is stranded.

Exporting

Export ADIF produces one file per program, named the way both POTA and WWFF want them: VE9CF@CA-4961_20260726.adi.

Two details that matter for credit:

• Your reference goes in MY_SIG_INFO (the activator field). SIG_INFO is reserved for the other station's park in a park-to-park.
• A contact at a POTA n-fer becomes one record per park in the POTA file. The WWFF file gets exactly one record per contact, because WWFF only credits a single reference.

Finish archives the activation and clears the slate for the next one.

13. Past activations

History (in the Activator Log) opens a list of everything you've archived — date, references, contact count, callsign, grid, bands, modes, time span and comment.

Each entry has a download button per program, so you can re-download a log months later if a program asks for it. Deleting warns you to download first.

18. Known Hunters & community

The Known Hunters sidebar widget shows you, in near‑real‑time, when the operators you care about are active — and when anyone using ParkWatch is spotting. It's a privacy‑respecting stand‑in for "who's on the air right now": there's no central server, it's built entirely from the public spot feed you already read.

Following hunters

Add callsigns in Settings → Hunting → Known hunters (one per line). When any of them spots an activator, that spot appears in the widget with the hunter's call, the activator, reference, frequency and age. ATNO and NEW‑PARK activations are flagged so you can pounce on the good ones.

The time window

Each hunter spot stays in the widget for a period you choose — Settings → Hunting → Known hunters → "Keep each hunter spot in the widget for ___ minutes" (default 5, up to 30). ParkWatch remembers each hunter's spot for the full window even after the live POTA feed replaces it, so a busy park being re‑spotted by others won't make your hunter's entry vanish early.

ParkWatch users

Spots posted through ParkWatch carry a discreet [PW] marker in the comment. The widget shows any [PW]‑tagged spot — even from operators not on your list — each with a small green PW badge, so you can see who else is out there running ParkWatch. Both behaviours are on by default and can be toggled in Settings → Hunting and Settings → Spotting.

Alerts

Turn on Settings → Alerts → "Desktop notification when a known hunter works/spots anyone" to get an OS notification whenever one of your hunters is active. It's off by default and independent of the needed‑spot notifications.

19. DX‑cluster monitoring

ParkWatch can hold a live telnet connection to a DX cluster and fold matching announcements into your spot list — handy for IOTA chasing or watching for specific people. Set it up in Settings → Spotting → DX cluster — IOTA & callsign watch:

• Node & login — the cluster host, port and your callsign for login.
• IOTA — surface DX spots that reference an IOTA number.
• Callsign watch — a list of calls; any DX spot of those calls is shown.
• Comment watch — keywords (e.g. POTA, QRP); spots whose comment contains them are shown.

The reader starts automatically when ParkWatch launches. To confirm it's connected, use Settings → Spotting → "Check reader status" — it reports whether the reader is running, its connection status, and how many spots it has buffered.

20. Network health

When your connection drops or slows to a crawl, ParkWatch shows a red banner across the top and pauses external lookups (QRZ callsign and logbook, spotting) so nothing hangs waiting on a dead network. Your spot list, logging and everything local keep working; the Manual QSO lookup tells you it's paused and to type details by hand. Everything resumes automatically when the connection recovers. Toggle it in Settings → Station → Appearance & behaviour.

14. Keeping ParkWatch updated

ParkWatch watches a shared Google Drive folder and notifies you when a new build appears. The notification offers:

• Yes, install — downloads the right bundle for your platform, installs it, and reloads. Your previous version is backed up beside the folder first.
• Remind me later — defers it (a day by default) and brings it back.

If an update adds a new permission, Chrome disables the extension until you re-enable it in chrome://extensions. The notification tells you when that's the case.

Prefer doing it yourself? Settings → Advanced → Update notifications can be turned off, or switched to just watching a version file.

15. Backup & restore

Settings → Advanced → Backup & restore. This is the clean way to set up ParkWatch on a second computer, or to keep a copy of your configuration before a big change.

Export settings to file downloads a small JSON file — parkwatch-settings_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.json — containing every ParkWatch setting: your callsign and grid, alert and spot preferences, watchlist and do-not-spot list, spotting and logging destinations, DX clusters, rig control, phone alerts, the update settings, everything.

Import settings from file reads that file, confirms before overwriting, and reloads with the new settings in place. It's tolerant of files from an older or newer build — anything unknown is dropped, anything missing falls back to the default — so a backup keeps working across versions.

What it doesn't carry, by design:

• Your ADIF queue — that's your log, not a setting. Move it with Export ADIF queue in Settings → Advanced → Data, or from the panel footer.
• Award data — the new install re-syncs it from your pota.app session.
• Your pota.app / QRZ / WWFF logins — you sign in on the new machine as normal.

Keep the file private. So that your logging and alert services work on the other computer straight away, the backup includes the credentials you've entered — QRZ password, logbook and Wavelog keys, Pushover/ntfy details. Treat the file like a password: store it somewhere safe and don't email it around.

16. Settings reference

The split between Spots and Alerts is deliberate: Spots changes what you see in the list, Alerts changes what interrupts you.

Reference data (WWFF directory, LLOTA lakes, dual parks) auto-refreshes daily at 00:01 UTC. Refresh reference data now does it on demand.

17. Troubleshooting

No NEW PARK flags Sign in at pota.app in the same browser, then Settings → Programs → Re-sync award data.

No NEW REFERENCE flags on WWFF spots Import your WWFF log: Settings → Programs → Import WWFF log. Sign in to WWFF LogSearch, run your Hunter search, export the results, and import that CSV (or any ADIF that carries the WWFF references you've worked).

The spot list is empty Click Refresh. Check your filters — "Needed only" plus a band filter can hide everything. The count line shows how many are hidden.

Map has no POTA/WWFF pins in All references Zoom in. Far out, park loading is skipped deliberately to avoid huge downloads.

Contacts on the activator map aren't plotted They need a gridsquare, which comes from QRZ lookup. Turn QRZ lookup on in Settings → Logging; contacts without a grid are counted but can't be drawn.

"Extension context invalidated" An open ParkWatch page from before a reload. Click the banner to refresh.

LLOTA spot fails Make sure a signed-in llota.app tab is open, and that you've posted at least one spot on llota.app yourself so ParkWatch has learned the format. Settings → Programs → LLOTA → Spot-post diagnostic records what happened.

Ticker is empty Settings → Advanced → Test these URLs now reports what each schedule source returned. The endpoints are editable there.

QRZ lookup isn't filling in name or state Settings → Logging → QRZ callsign lookup — check the username and password, then use Test lookup. Full detail needs a QRZ XML subscription. Country will still come from the callsign prefix without it.

Import settings did nothing / was rejected The file must be a ParkWatch settings backup (the JSON you get from Export settings to file). A plain ADIF or some other JSON is declined with a message. If you cancelled the overwrite confirmation, nothing changes.

"Yes, install" didn't install It needs the ParkWatch helper (installed by the install script). If it can't run, ParkWatch opens the Drive folder so you can update by hand and tells you why. After an update that changed permissions, re-enable the extension in chrome://extensions.

Something changed and now nothing works POTA's API is unofficial and undocumented. If park search or the map broke suddenly, an endpoint change is the likely cause.