iotamaps - FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
What is IOTA?
IOTA stands for Islands On The Air, and is an award scheme for radio amateurs interested in making contacts by radio with others operating from islands worldwide.
More information can be found on the RSGB IOTA Programme page.
Why have mapping for IOTA?
Why not? - but seriously, using the maps provided by iotamaps will show you where the IOTA station you have contacted is situated, and can give you a much better idea of some, or all, of the following:
- the geographical location of the activator's station
- the propagation path between your station and that of the activator
- the difficulties involved in setting up the activator's station
- additional links to other sources of information on the island group and its' individual islands
There are other mapping sites for IOTA - what's so special about iotamaps?
There are other mapping resources for IOTA, but they are all very limited in their coverage of IOTA island groups, with old-fashioned, clunky user interfaces - some of which will only work in certain browsers!
iotamaps, on the other hand, has been built with the user in mind, features a fully interactive user-interface, works in all modern browsers, and uses as its' basis the Leaflet Maps API to provide fast mapping services, plus a regularly-updated database of IOTA island groups and their individual islands.
Several features unique to iotamaps allow it stand head and shoulders above the competition:
- at the same time, the island group and it's islands are displayed on the map;
-
a separate dialog window also opens which lists group information, with each individual island listed in a table.
-
islands listed in the table function as links to other, external, sources of information on that particular island.
- A search dialog is also provided to enable the user to quickly find any IOTA group, or individual island in the database:
- Using the options dialog, users can enter their callsign and grid locator, so that distances and bearings between their station and an IOTA group can be calculated:
- All dialog windows in iotamaps are moveable - i.e. they can be moved or dragged around the screen, allowing the user to move a dialog to a place on the screen where it doesn't obstruct the view of some other object. Use the mouse to grab the top bar of the dialog, and drag it where you want.
- A very special feature - unique to iotamaps - is the ability to show the individual islands within a group in the correct position on the map. Here displayed are the Canary Islands AF-004, with each of the eleven islands in the group marked with a custom icon:
-
Not all of the islands in the IOTA database have yet had their positions determined. This takes time to perform manually, but we are fortunate to have tools at our disposal which enable us to quickly
determine island positions and load them into our system. We pay particular attention to those IOTA groups mentioned in the IOTA cluster, to ensure islands in those groups get priority treatment.
Groups for which island positions have already been determined are color-highlighted in the groups dropdown list:
Anything else which makes iotamaps special?
Plenty! For instance, you can link to the iotamaps mapping page so that it does any of the following directly on startup:
-
load a particular IOTA group:
Examples:
- load the Canary Islands AF-004 group: http://www.iotamaps.com/gr/AF-004
- load the Turneffe Islands NA-123 group: http://www.iotamaps.com/gr/NA-123
-
load a particular continent:
Example:
- load all IOTA island groups in Asia : http://www.iotamaps.com/cnt/AS
-
load a particular DXCC entity:
Example:
- load all IOTA island groups in DXCC entity 497 (Croatia): http://www.iotamaps.com/dxcc/497
Please note that data on island groups and islands in this website are copyrighted material:
"Includes IOTA Group Information, copyright (c) 1985-2025 Islands On The Air (IOTA) Ltd"
|
As more features are developed, we will list them here. Until then, happy IOTA'ing from the iotamaps team! |
|
Web Hosting by Digital Ocean