UK Portable Map

Online Resources Third Party Software
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Apologies for a very UK focussed post. Recently I’ve been putting together a tool that I wanted to help me identify correct activation areas for POTA to help planning my activities.

Basically, my initial goal is I wanted to easily overlay POTA references with boundaries you see on Defra’s MAGIC map, which includes land designations for things like National Nature Reserves, SSSI, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, etc. Luckily, various UK government agencies have public services to provide this data.

From this first version, I since added a bunch of other things that I found useful: like WWFF references (thanks to @DL4MFM CQGMA for helping me get access to location data) to more easily identify joint activations; WAB squares and Maidenhead overlays. And I’ve also recently added UK BOTA.

So reason for posting here, is I just added SOTA layer as well (thanks to SOTA team for their API). So for those wanting to also activate POTA/WWFF/BOTA at the same time as SOTA, you may find it useful to idenfity if the summit is within the correct activation area.

You can find the map here: https://kwirk.github.io/pota-gb-map/

All source code is on GitHub.

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@M1SDH

Always love maps and yours looks very nice! Well done.

Paul

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Superb! My new favourite thing.

Now, if it had UK trig points too :grin:

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Many thanks, a clever thing. I can see myself using it. The BOTA points are interesting, I assume the circle shows the activation zone.

If I could make a small suggestion a button to bring the map back to show north at the top would be useful. :slight_smile:

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Yes, and much simpler than loading the BOTA .kml file on google earth every time you use it.

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Very nice indeed - a great piece of work!

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Hi John,
I think the circle is just to highlight the UKBOTA name as they change size when you zoom in or out.
My one and only Bunker activation attempt, (B/G-0132) I had the antenna on top of the bunker entrance, I don’t think there is an AZ like in SOTA.
73 Ed.

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Yes there is Ed, and it’s a 1km radius as illustrated on the map. I checked my local bunker 1km radius on the subject map and a 1:25,000 OS map and they match.

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Ah, OK on the 1 km access zone - but I guess the aim is to get as close as safely/legally allowable in any case.

If I’d realised that when I was over I could have activated the B/G-0130 Bunker, which we went to first but could not get to because of an impassible field (bulls and mud) between the road and the bunker.

OK - and the rings on the map change size based on the zoom magnification then - that’s neat.

73 Ed.

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Thanks for feedback everyone :smile:

I’ll see if I can add those trig points @MM0EFI :wink:

@M0WIV You should see a button appear top right when map goes off north, to allow you to return to north at top.

And to confirm, those BOTA circle areas should be the valid activation areas for UK BOTA. The do look a bit odd when zooming (limitation of library I’m using), but once stopped zooming, they snap to correct size.

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BOTA = Beaches on the Air; has been for years.

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It doesn’t work on my Firefox, the menu pane is not there but does work on Brave. (Both version on Win10 Pro 64) I’ll try on Linux later.

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This is why I avoid abbreviating where I can on the site itself, to avoid any confusion :wink:

Do you know what version of Firefox you’re using? I’m using Firefox on Linux and Android here and it is working okay.

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Just tried with v119 on Debian12 and it’s the same. Probably Noscript, Ghostery, Ublock Origin or ClearURL plug-in causing the grief.

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UKBOTA = UK Bunkers on the Air

You see what they did there? :wink:

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I’ve now added the trig point pillars.

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Legend! That was almost too easy for you.

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Thank you for this very interesting and handy tool, Steve!

Happy 2024!

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Thanks to @DD5LP and Rob G7LAS, I’ve now added a HEMA layer also.

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