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.

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. 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 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.

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.
• 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.

• Connecting to sources means dalMap is waiting for its first live update. It will keep trying; check your connection if the state does not clear.
• Waiting for data means the selected layer has not received its first update yet.
• No matching observations means the selected layers are current, but nothing matches the active filters. Change the filters, or open another group.
• No fresh activity remains on the map means the last reports have aged out. dalMap is retrying automatically.
• 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 is being reported to you for that layer. 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 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.