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Hunt without signal

This page shows you how to hunt and log where your phone has no data: in the mountains, abroad without roaming, or at a field day. You prepare once with a connection; out there you find and log, and the app syncs when the signal returns.

Before you go

  1. Open the app once with a connection, on the phone you take, and sign in. From then on it opens without one too. Add it to the home screen: the phone then keeps the app and its data more reliably.
  2. Sign in with signal on a new phone. Signing in, and making a pack, registers the phone's device key with the instance. A find made offline is signed with that key.
  3. Make an offline pack of where you are going: open Offline (or Offline packs in Nearby).

Offline packs

A pack is one Maidenhead locator square. Type the locator, or take the square at the map centre. The square is outlined on the map. Under Only some cache types you can leave types out.

Size Example Covers
Field JN 20° × 10°
Square JN77 2° × 1°
Subsquare JN77sb about 6 × 4.6 km
Extended square JN77sb42 about 600 × 460 m

Check size fetches the pack's data first and shows what it holds before anything is kept:

  • the caches (at most 5000 in a pack), each with its description, hint, latest 5 logs and the shape of its stages;
  • the images: none, a thumbnail per cache (a few kilobytes each), or every image;
  • the map of the square, if your instance offers one: as detailed as fits the pack's 250 MB, without place names. Without one, the offline map is a grid under the caches. Ask your sysop (The offline map).

Download keeps it. Refresh brings a pack up to date and costs almost nothing when nothing changed; a pack older than a week says so. The area you last browsed is kept automatically too.

The browser is asked to keep your packs. If it may still clear them when space runs low, the Offline panel says so; adding the app to the home screen helps.

Owners: Your caches → Pack my caches packs every cache you own, wherever it is. It lists the ones that need a visit: several did-not-finds in a row, no find for months, or disabled. Post as maintenance in a cache's log form works offline like any log.

Out there

  • The map shows the caches of every pack in view and says where they came from: Offline — caches from pack “JN77sb”, 2 days old.
  • A cache page shows its stored copy. Find counts, favourites and ratings show once you are back online.
  • Log a find as always. It is saved: Saved — offline, will sync when you're back online.
  • Multi-stage caches: a pack shows the published start. An NFC stage with a long enough tag code travels sealed under that code. Long enough means the tag's serial, or nine or more random letters and digits. Scan the tag, or type its code, and the next stage opens on the phone. A geo stage, or an NFC stage with a short code, unlocks only online. Checking where you stand needs the instance, and anyone holding the pack could guess a short code. A stage's position or clue is never in a pack in the clear.
  • No data, but a radio? In Logs to sync, each waiting find, DNF or note offers Send it from a radio. It shows the APRS message (FOUND AC-1234 …) and the service call, ready to copy into your handheld. Sent that way, it follows the radio rules. Then tap I sent it by radio, so the app does not log it a second time.

Back online

The app syncs on its own when it starts and when the connection returns. It sends your logs first. Then it refreshes packs older than a day, on Wi-Fi only unless Offline → Sync → Refresh packs on mobile data is on. Sync now in Logs to sync does it at once and refreshes every pack on any connection.

With the app closed, Chrome and Edge send waiting logs in the background. Safari, Firefox and iPhones have no Background Sync, so there the logs go when you next open the app.

The top bar says what waits: 2 logs waiting · 1 needs attention · pack “JN77sb” 3 days old.

Your find is verified at the time you made it, not when it synced. It is signed with that time. The instance checks your APRS track and your phone's location against that moment, so the find gets the badge it would have had with signal. That holds for up to 7 days. The logbook shows logged offline at 10:02, synced 18:14.

A find without a device signature, from a browser that cannot sign, counts from when it arrives. A wrong phone clock matters too. A time more than a minute ahead, or before you registered the device, is not taken, and the find counts from its arrival.

When the connection returns, the Offline banner on the map goes and the live map comes back. A cache page that said Saved follows the log: Sent once the instance takes it, Not sent with the reason if it refuses it.

Nothing is lost. If the instance refuses a log when it syncs, for example because the cache was deleted, a message says so with the reason, and the log moves to Needs attention. There you retry it, edit its comment, or discard it. A log goes only to the instance it was made on; signed in to another, it waits and says so.

A cache archived or disabled while your find waited refuses it when it syncs: the find lands under Needs attention, with the reason.

Where this helps

  • A club hunt or field day on a Pocket station. A Pocket station is an instance on one Android phone. The other phones join its hotspot and use it as their instance, with no internet at all. The caches, the logs and the map all come from the phone in the field. Back home, the Pocket station sends everything on to its home instance. Ask your sysop (Install Pocket).
  • SOTA and POTA activations. Pack the summit's or park's subsquare. Log the cache next to the activation with no coverage. You can also send the find by radio over the activation's own APRS path.
  • Holidays abroad without roaming. Pack the squares you will visit on hotel Wi-Fi; finds sync the next time you are on Wi-Fi.
  • EmComm exercises. Packs and a Pocket station keep a team working while the networks are down on purpose. The radio path carries finds and notes over APRS.

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