APRS OTA

Hosting

• One tap sends HOST, with a comment of your own.
• The op starts when the bot confirms it. A HOST the bot refused is shown as refused, and the app does not show a running op until the bot says there is one.
• Hosting is RF-only. The bot counts a HOST it heard on the air, so a phone with no radio link cannot host.
• The screen shows your confirmed count and the time remaining, with a button to extend.
• The op clock counts the QSLs the bot answered, and the wrap-up shows how many of your calls it left unanswered.
• A BLAST box on the host and chase screens sends one message to everyone in the op.

Contacts

• Chasers appear as cards with their message and, where the bot supplies it, their grid square.
• Confirming a contact is one tap, with an optional note that goes out in the QSL.
• A confirmed contact shows what you and the chaser said.
• A QSL the bot refused is shown as refused. QSL is RF-only, so a message can be delivered and acknowledged and still log nothing.

Chasing

• One tap sends CQ, which asks the bot who is hosting. It does not announce you.
• Hosts are listed with distance and bearing from your position.
• Hosts you have already worked are marked.
• The default call message is yours to edit.
• Chasing works over APRS-IS as well as RF.
• The chase list can come from the internet instead of the bot: the ops listed on aprsota.org, with each op's number, start time and a live countdown, refreshed once a minute. A host who has started a new op is not shown as already worked.
• Each op has a map of its stations, at the positions the server reports, with the distance to each.

Your ops

• Every op you host or chase is kept as its own record: a summary, who was in it, anything blasted to the whole field, and the full exchange in order with each line labelled.
• Records are built from the messages themselves, so they survive navigating away, backgrounding and restarting the app.

Sharing an op

• An op can be shared as a picture carrying your callsign and comment and, once the op is over, the bot's closing figures.
• Only figures the bot stated appear. A count it did not give is left off rather than shown as zero.
• Several designs to pick from; the choice is remembered.
• Sharing is in the iPhone app. It is not in the Android release yet.

What gets transmitted

• Every button on the OTA screen can show the exact packet it will send, addressee included.

The APRS OTA guide covers all of this in full, including why hosting needs a radio.