Although Spothole is designed "API first" and designed so that more technical users to write their own clients, the majority of Spothole users use it via its web interface. This page describes that interface and how to use it.
Across the top of the page, or hidden behind the hamburger menu button on mobile, is the main menu which provides access to all of Spothole's features. These are:
Conditions, Status, Help and API are stanalone pages, while the others have many more options as discussed below.
The spots page displays the traditional web-based "DX cluster" view, with a table of spots. The latest will appear at the top of the table, and old ones will fall off the bottom. The list keeps itself up to date automatically, but if you need to temporarily pause it, you can use the Run and Stop buttons.
On small screens such as mobile phones, the table will reflow into multiple lines per spot, keeping the alternating background shading so you can tell spots apart.
A Search box is provided; this filters the spots so that only DX callsigns or comments that match your entry will be shown. You can use this to look for specific callsign prefixes, or activities that aren't covered in the main filters.
Three buttons at the top of the table provide the means for you to customise what you see and what data is used. They are common to all the spot/alert pages, and are labelled Filters, Display and Your data. Clicking each one will expand a menu of further options.
The Filters panel allows to to adjust what spots and alerts you will see. You can filter by band, mode, DX continent, DE (spotter) continent, activity, and/or data source.
Activities include traditional amateur radio activities like DXpeditions and Contests, "adventure" activities like POTA and SOTA, regional activities specific to a certain country, and event-based activities that only happen at certain times of year.
Any of these filter options can be turned on and off as you like.
The Display panel allows to to adjust other aspects of the spots you see. You can configure how many spots you get on the page, whether UTC or local time is used, what colour scheme is used for pages and frequency bands, which columns are shown in the table, and whether an audio sound effect is played when new spots pop up.
In the list of columns, three are disabled by default: Distance, Bearing, and "Worked?". Distance and bearing can be enabled if you enter your grid locator under Your data. "Worked?" adds a checkbox next to each row so you can tick off stations you've worked. There's currently no logger integration; this is just for a quick check when you're using Spothole standalone.
The Your Data panel allows you to enter information specific to you. You can enter your QRZ.com and/or HamQTH credentials, which will allow Spothole to fetch better data for the spots. You can set your grid locator, and clear the list of calls you've worked, supporting the features discussed under "Display". You can also enter a list of "Wanted Calls" (including partial calls), which will cause matching spots to have a gold highlight to catch your eye.
The map display shows spots visually on a map of the world. The location chosen can be based on various sources, such as POTA park locations, QRZ.com lookup of an operator's home location, grids in the spot comments, and so on. They are not guaranteed to be accurate, but should give a rough guide to where in the world each operator is. You can click on the markers for more information about each spot.
The Display menu on the Map page has a few differences to the one on the Spots page:
The bands display shows each amateur radio band that has active spots as a column, from lowest frequency at the top to highest frequency at the bottom. Within it, markers indcate the callsign of the operator spotted on that frequency.
By hovering your mouse over the callsign, you can see the mode and the exact frequency.
The upcoming page shows future park and summit activations, satellite operations, DXpeditions and contests from various sources, in a table.
The table differs slightly from the table on the Spots page. Here, the entries are in the opposite order, with "now" at the top, going further into the future as you scroll down. The table is also split into three sections: "On Now", "Starting in the next 24 hours", and "Starting later". Because upcoming alerts don't pop up as often as spots, there is no automatic refresh on this page.
This page has a unique card in the Filters settings, "Duration Limit". This allows you to hide long-running activations that hang around in the list for a long time, allowing you to see the more time-limited ones. Because this is usually only a problem with POTA (where some people add an alert several weeks long to say they'll be activating at some point during their holiday), you can choose to exclude DXpeditions and Contests from this filter, because there will almost always be someone on the air during the whole time the event is live.
Some upcoming alerts, such as DXpeditions and Contests, have links where you can learn more about them.
The Add Spot page allows you to add a new spot into the Spothole system directly. Currently, this stays within Spothole and is not sent "upstream" to DX clusters, POTA, SOTA etc. regardless of any activity you select.
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