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A better POTA map tool just landed…
I normally don’t get real excited about new things anymore…BUT…this one has my attention. I say a blog post by Thomas (K4SWL) and he shared it, I actually didn’t read his whole blog post (sorry Tom) but immediately clicked on the link to the new interactive POTA map that was created by Miguel LX1MDA.
I normally don’t get real excited about new things anymore…BUT…this one has my attention. I say a blog post by Thomas (K4SWL) and he shared it, I actually didn’t read his whole blog post (sorry Tom) but immediately clicked on the link to the new interactive POTA map that was created by Miguel LX1MDA. Here is the link so you can go see it for yourself: FieldQTH Map Below is a screenshot of me learning almost immediately that my nearest park was not actually my nearest park! I was today years old when I learned that the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail runs right smack dab down through the middle of my home town of Trenton GA. I could have simple went to any number of parking lots in town and been well withing the park boundaries all this time!!! That double green line shows that the outside of the two boundaries to be within the park by POTA rules.
The map is configurable in any number of ways so you can see satellite views or traditional “apple” map style view or you can pick from several others to your liking. The really big thing with this map that Miguel has done so well is show the actual park boundaries for us! This is one of the best parts of this map to me. The original POTA map, while very useful in telling us which parks are in the network, lack the boundaries so you know if you are in the park or not when you setup. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes it is not so obvious. What I also like is that it shows where there is a two-fer or three-fer or what have you. Look at this screen shot below of the map where is shows the trail of tears trail running through the middle of the Chickamauga battlefield park. That is something that I didn’t know at all till Allen Padgett told me a few months ago. This map shows it all…That purple line is the other park passing through the battlefield. So if you setup within both at one, you are operating a two-fer!
Now for the reality, it isn’t perfect, from what I have gathered, the trail of tears runs down old HWY 27 through the park (LaFayette Rd) and not through the woods as it shows on this screen capture. Also when I checked Cloudland Canyon State Park it lacked the Nick-a-jack Trailhead in the park boundaries too. But remember, this is a brand new website and program so it is essentially in alpha right now. It will only get better with time. Even with it missing some intel, it is still a solid 85 to 90% right and that is a HUGE benefit to the POTA community as a whole. I really hope Miguel keeps adding to this with corrections and updates over time. This is a real gold nugget for the POTA activator in 2026. I have always been confused about multiple park activations as there are not too many in my area. The one above it about it from what I know at this time, but this does help. I really like how it shows the trail park number so you can see that it is a 2fer.
On top of it being an incredible map already, if you will enter your callsign into it, the map will reach into your POTA profile information and update the map with your activated parks and you can then sort the map by activations and not-activated parks and see what is in your area and all sorts of stuff for that too! Here you can see where I selected Already activated and it populated the map with the parks that I have already activated that are within the viewable area on the map. I have done more parks, but this filter only applies to the section of the map that you are viewing at the time. If I zoom in on this map, then the list on the left dynamically adjusts to only show the parks that are viewable once I stop zooming in. They come and go depending on what the map looks like. It is really fast and responsive too. I don’t know if this is because the bandwidth isn’t strained yet or if he is just really good at coding, but the page is not sluggish at all. It is really well executed.
All in all, this is already a powerful tool and should only get better with time, my hat goes off to Miguel for such an awesome tool!
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WK4DS- David
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