Activity

Choose the activity you need

Open Map tools and choose Radio activity or Regional activity, turn on the smallest useful set of layers, then inspect the marker’s source and age. Enablement tells you what you asked to see; it does not guarantee that a source has current data.

Activity does not wait for My station. Beacons, DX Cluster and xOTA spots report with nothing set. A grid square adds the layers that are asked for around a location, so the prompt offering it is one quiet line under the heading rather than a gate in front of the list, and any layer still waiting says which half it needs.

Live means the latest activity reports dalMap has received, not that a local or remote operator is active, available, or taking an action now. Provider reporting, application processing, and network transit can delay, omit, or reorder a report; use its observation age to judge freshness.

The word beside Map tools says whether that activity is reaching you. Connecting means dalMap is waiting for the first update after opening, after a dropped connection, or after one update it could not read, and clears on its own. Live appears once updates are arriving. Not answering means updates are still arriving but every network source behind them has stopped answering, so only the beacon schedule and what those sources last reported are on the map. Reconnect means updates have stopped and will not resume by waiting; select it to try again. Reload means this page can no longer read the updates being sent to it: two in a row could not be read, or one could not and nothing readable followed within 25 seconds. That usually means dalMap has been updated; select it to reload the page and keep receiving. On a narrow screen only the dot shows, and it carries the same word for a screen reader.

Radio activity

• NCDXF/IARU beacons show activity calculated from the published beacon schedule. A scheduled beacon is not reception evidence at your station.
• PSK Reporter and WSPR show recent submitted digital-mode observations. They are observed reports, not a two-way path, coverage, or prediction.
• DX Cluster and xOTA show recent operator-entered spots. A spot can be wrong, stale, unworkable, or not an official program record.

Use each layer’s available band, mode, or program choices to narrow the evidence after enabling it. These browser-side filters do not publish changes or ask a source to retune to your preferences.

Regional activity

• APRS shows recent position-bearing stations, objects, and items. A report does not prove direct RF reception, current location, or availability. A selected station’s details name the symbol it published — Car, Digipeater, green star, overlay S — with its two-character code beside the name; that is what the station says it is, not a checked role, and a code the symbol index does not name is shown as the code alone. It needs both a callsign and a grid in My station, and stays unavailable until it has them.
• Repeaters show published APRS metadata about nearby repeaters. Presence is not a coverage, coordination, access, or permission claim. It needs both a callsign and a grid in My station, and stays unavailable until it has them.

My reports

Set both a callsign and grid in My station, then turn on My reports to focus PSK Reporter and WSPR on recent reports involving that exact callsign at the saved grid. When it is off, those providers retain their broader grid scope. My reports is a scope rather than a layer of its own: it narrows what those two providers are asked for, and the PSK and WSPR layers are what draw the result, so turn at least one of them on as well. Until you do, the row reads Needs PSK or WSPR. My reports does not merge the providers, enable their map layers, or change their individual band filters. Public network reports remain separate from private local receiver decodes.

My reports direction narrows the scope to one half of it:

• Both shows every report involving your callsign, in either direction.
• TX only shows the reports where another station heard you—evidence about how your transmissions are getting out.
• RX only shows the reports where your own station heard someone—evidence about your receive path.

The choice filters what is already on the map and does not change what either provider is asked for, so switching between the three takes effect at once. The count beside My reports follows the choice, and the chips appear only while the scope is on; turning it off returns to Both.

Signal paths and Band Reach

• Signal paths connects activity already visible on the map to your saved grid. It visualizes displayed reports; it is not a proof of audibility or a path forecast.
  Paths that report a direction draw it three ways: reports where another station heard you are drawn in green with short dashes, and reports your own station heard are drawn in violet with longer dashes, each ending in an arrowhead in its own color pointing the way the signal travelled. Paths to activity that reports no direction—a cluster spot, an activation, a beacon—keep the green default, which is a path to something you have not been shown to have heard or been heard by rather than a claim about direction.
• Band Reach groups recent PSK Reporter and WSPR evidence by remote grid for a selected band, as grids or sectors. All bands instead lists, for each direction, every band with fresh evidence toward it, so you can see where each band is being heard without changing band. Those bands read in band order and are not ranked: a band with more evidence was reported more, which is not the same as carrying a better path. It describes deduplicated recent observations—not signal strength, guaranteed range, or predicted coverage.

Read a layer status

Use the status beside the affected layer or map notice to decide what to do next. The same wordings appear on the Hazards, Weather observations and Warnings groups, so this list covers those too.

• Waiting for data means the layer is switched on and its first update has not arrived yet. It will keep trying; check your connection if the state does not clear. Every layer says this in the same words, whichever group it is in.
• No matching observations means the selected layers are current, but nothing matches the active filters. Change the filters, or open another group.
• Stale means the last update arrived long enough ago that dalMap will not present it as current. What is drawn is still what was reported; its age is what changed, and any count shown beside the word is of that older reading.
• Source not answering means dalMap asked and has had nothing usable back, so nothing new is reaching you for that layer. On the activity layers, spots that source reported before it stopped stay on the map at their own age and age out as they would have anyway; nothing after them is being reported. On the activity and satellite layers, dalMap asks a second time before it says this, so one refused request never shows here. It keeps asking, and this can clear without you doing anything. Use the layer’s source link if you want to check that source yourself.
• Not offered on this dalMap means this copy of dalMap does not carry that source at all. Nothing is wrong and waiting will not change it — every other layer is unaffected, and this is the one status on this list that is not about something being late, missing, or broken.
• Needs My station means the layer cannot ask for anything until My station has a grid square. Set one directly, or give a callsign and dalMap will look up the square published against it. A layer that can draw nothing until then offers no switch: there is no enablement to give it that would produce a result. One already switched on keeps its switch, so you can turn it off, and says the same thing about why nothing is arriving.
• Needs a NASA Earthdata key is Satellite fire detections asking for the one thing it cannot run without: a free key of your own from NASA, which the link under the row takes you to save on Data sources. Until one is saved the row offers no switch. Once it is, the row reads like the others.
• Needs your callsign means My station is set and the layer is waiting on the other half. Only sources that identify you to the provider ask for this — APRS is the one — so most layers never show it.
• nothing from …, after a count, names a source the layer draws on that has been asked and has said nothing. The count is what its other source sent, so it is a real answer about part of the picture rather than all of it. Official observations reads two, and reports nothing from NDBC while the airport reports are arriving and the buoy reports are not.

That one is ours to resolve rather than yours: it is here so a count never reads as complete when it is not.

The propagation layers under Solar & geomagnetic and Regional propagation say something different, because two of their four states are working ones. D absorption, F layer, Auroral, NVIS, and Tropo potential each report the evidence they are drawing on and how current it is, in that layer’s own words:

• Current … means the layer drew on its full current evidence: Current absorption context, Current space weather, Current auroral model, Current solar values, or Current model guidance, in the order the five layers are listed above.
• Older … means it drew on the most recent evidence it holds while newer evidence is not arriving. What is drawn is still what was reported; its age is what changed. Auroral reads Broad or older context instead, because its fallback can also be coarse Kp-derived latitude bands standing in for the NOAA OVATION model grid rather than an older grid.
• No … means the layer is asking and has nothing current to draw on, so it is reporting nothing to you. It keeps asking, and this can clear without you doing anything.
• Not offered on this dalMap means this copy does not carry that layer’s source at all, so nothing is arriving and waiting will not change it. It is the same wording, for the same reason, as the one in the list above. Tropo potential reads it when this copy does not carry NOAA GFS; any of the five can read it, and the ones that do not are unaffected.

Switch one on and the Propagation panel on the map carries the rest: which source, how complete, and what a fallback leaves out. The auroral fallback names both halves there — the broad Kp-based context it is showing, and the model grid it is missing.

Partial coverage and an empty map do not prove that a condition is absent. dalMap keeps still-useful evidence only while it is visibly aged.