Help

Fair on the Air, or FOTA, connects amateur radio with fairs, festivals and community events. You can find event listings, plan radio activity, find stations on the air, record contacts and take part with a club. You can browse the event directory, map, spots (recent reports of stations on the air) and published activations without an account.

The directory and several buttons currently use the word fair for event listings. Use Submit a Fair to send a missing event's details for review, whether it is a fair, festival or community event. Submitting a listing does not publish it immediately or establish credit for contacts.

Imagine a fictional club, River County Radio Club, operating a station at the River County Festival. The festival has one event listing. Saturday's radio session is an activation; a later session can be another activation under the same event.

Alex manages Saturday's activation and uploads 100 contacts made using the club's station callsign. Jo operated 60 contacts and Sam operated 40. Alex's upload records who submitted the log; it does not give Alex 100 personal operator contacts. Jo and Sam need the appropriate confirmed operator attribution for their contacts. The club receives contact credit only through an explicit, eligible club-credit selection or reviewed attribution decision.

An organizer or support volunteer can also be listed as a participant without claiming to have operated those contacts. A hunter's matching record is a separate question again: it helps establish that the contact was recorded independently from both sides.

No. Public browsing does not require either. A callsign is optional when you create a FOTA account, and a FOTA account is separate from membership in any club. Some actions need a verified callsign, including forum posting, logging your own hunter contacts and receiving confirmed personal operator credit. Other actions have their own account, permission and record-status checks.

Choose Create Account. Enter your public display name, email address and a password of at least eight characters, confirm the password and accept the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may add your callsign now or later.

FOTA assigns a permanent member number and a public profile identity. Check your inbox for the account-email verification message. Signing in and browsing are possible before email verification, but ordinary member actions such as submitting events, creating activations, spotting, uploading images and entering or importing contacts require email verification.

No. Email verification confirms access to the email address used for your account. Callsign verification checks your callsign against the configured callsign provider, currently the QRZ callsign directory when enabled, or records an authorized staff review. Club membership validation is a third, separate process.

If you entered a callsign during registration, FOTA attempts provider validation after you confirm your account email. A provider failure does not undo your account, member number or email confirmation.

QRZ is an amateur radio callsign directory. QRZ verification confirms that a matching callsign record exists. A positive result can mark your claim Verified, subject to identity, duplicate-claim and dispute checks. It does not prove ownership or control of the callsign and does not automatically establish historical operator or hunter credit. Those contacts need their own attribution and evidence; the person uploading a log is not assumed to have operated it.

You do not need to match your FOTA email to a QRZ email, change your QRZ Nickname, publish a token or complete a QRZ profile challenge. FOTA account email verification is still required separately. Do not send your QRZ password to staff as evidence for a callsign claim.

Check spam and junk folders, then use the verification resend control on your Dashboard. FOTA asks you to wait at least two minutes between resend attempts. Verification links expire after 48 hours and work once. Use a recent message; only a limited number of unexpired links are retained.

If the link reports failure, check your Dashboard's email status before requesting another message. If sending fails or messages still do not arrive, use Contact with your account email and the error shown. A message accepted for sending does not guarantee delivery to your inbox. Replies to the automated verification sender are not monitored.

Open Account Settings → Callsign Verification and read the latest result. The callsign's status and the progress of its verification attempt are separate: an unverified claim can be waiting for a retry or for manual review.

If older instructions tell you to place a token on an external profile, use Retry Provider or contact staff instead. The current process does not use that challenge.

No. Keep the account, chosen password and verification email. Contact an administrator with your account email and the exact message. The account may exist even though FOTA could not finish assigning or confirming its public identity. Recovery is performed on that existing account. Creating a duplicate can make the problem harder to resolve.

Use Log In with your email address, existing internal username or currently verified callsign, plus your password. Your public display name, mention handle and FOTA member number are not additional login methods. If callsign login fails, try your account email.

Use the password recovery link on the sign-in page if you have forgotten your password. If you cannot access the account email, or a persistent error blocks recovery, use Contact. Include the failing page and approximate time. Do not include passwords or password-reset links.

Update the callsign in Account Settings. Changing it resets callsign verification, so verify the new claim before using it for actions that require a verified callsign. Your account remains the same account, with the same permanent FOTA member number.

Historical contact and participation records keep their recorded identities. Changing or verifying a callsign does not automatically transfer old hunter history or assign past operator credit. Ask staff to review uncertain history. A public profile URL that looks like a callsign is not proof of verification.

Your profile presents your public identity, member number, photo, biography, valid optional profile links and relevant activity, club and recognition information. You can choose whether to show your country and region. Your account email and internal login name are not displayed as public profile fields.

Information you type into a biography, link, image or public post is still content you are choosing to publish. Hiding a profile field does not remove the same information from text or images you have posted elsewhere.

Open Account Settings to edit your callsign, biography, location and external-profile fields, or use its profile-photo controls. The Mention Handle is the unique name other members use to mention you; save it with its own control. Handles must meet the displayed format and availability rules. Your permanent FOTA member number is assigned by FOTA and is not a field you can edit.

Choose View your public profile to check the result. The Settings form does not offer a display-name editor; use Contact if the public display name you chose at registration needs review. Changing a handle is separate from callsign verification and contact attribution.

They describe different work. Managed Log Contacts are records you manage; Personal Operator QSOs identify contacts supported by confirmed individual operation. Participation, station activity and club activity can also be shown separately. A large station log with unknown operators can be valid managed activity without becoming the uploader's personal operating history.

FOTA has follows, reactions, messages, notifications, mute and block controls where those features are enabled. Follow and message preferences are separate from club membership and management assignments. Following a club does not make you a verified member, and following an event does not make you its manager.

Mute and block controls affect social interactions; they do not cancel an existing management assignment or replace a request for staff review. Use the available notification and social settings to manage these preferences.

Use Find a Fair, the map or search. Search by event name, FOTA reference or location, then open the event's page to see its published details and linked activations. Check an activation's UTC schedule and status. Spots shows recent on-air reports.

An event listing does not mean a radio station is currently operating. An upcoming activation is a plan; a spot is a recent report. Neither guarantees that you can hear or contact the station at the moment you look.

Sign in with an email-verified account and choose Submit a Fair. Search first to avoid duplicates. Provide the event identity, jurisdiction and a usable location. Add dates, website, description, eligibility notes and reviewer notes where you have them. You can associate existing clubs or submit a club suggestion for review; those associations do not grant ownership.

Use Review & Submit → Submit for Review. Staff review the submission and its reference assignment before approval. A submission or suggested reference is not a published event or permission to approve your own listing.

Yes. Use the structured manual location fields when the search cannot resolve the venue. You can confirm or adjust a map marker where available. Check the country and jurisdiction as well as the street or venue information.

A listing without usable coordinates may be absent from the map even if its event details exist. Report a wrong published location to its Fair Manager or through Contact, with the event link and corrected information. Do not create a second event to fix a pin.

Review the decision and available notification. A duplicate decision points to the existing event reference; use that listing rather than submitting the same event again. For missing information or a decision you believe is wrong, send the submission details and supporting information through Contact. Staff can review or reopen the submission. Do not assume that changing a form or submitting a duplicate will reverse the decision.

Assigned Fair Managers can maintain their own event's supported profile fields through the Fair Manager workspace. FOTA administrators handle review decisions and reference administration. Submitting an event, belonging to an associated club or managing an activation does not automatically give you Fair Manager access.

FOTA references are permanent and are not recycled when a listing is retired. If a reference or duplicate relationship is wrong, request review instead of inventing a replacement reference.

Open the published club profile and choose Request Membership Validation. The request asks the club to validate your membership on FOTA; creating a FOTA account does not join you to a real-world club. You can have verified memberships in more than one club.

If the club is missing, use Suggest a Club. A suggestion waits for review; it does not immediately create a published club or appoint you as its manager.

Check the club page or Dashboard for your current state. A pending request is not verified membership. Rejection or revocation on FOTA does not change your FOTA account or alter the club's external roster.

HamClubOnline is a club roster service. When a club has connected it to FOTA, the membership check looks for an exact match to your verified FOTA callsign and a roster entry explicitly marked Active. Ask your Club Manager which validation method your club uses. Manual review and CSV roster validation are also supported.

A matching record does not necessarily approve the request automatically; it can remain pending for manager review. Missing matches, unavailable data and service errors also leave the request pending rather than rejecting it automatically. FOTA does not match you by name alone or modify the external roster. Members do not need to share personal HamClubOnline login credentials.

A CSV is a table saved as a comma-separated text file. A Club Manager can download the roster template, upload a file and review a preview before confirming it. The file needs a callsign column. Optional names or email columns do not replace callsign matching to currently verified FOTA accounts.

The preview identifies matched, already verified, pending, unmatched, ambiguous and invalid rows. Duplicate callsigns in the file are ambiguous. Previewing grants no memberships. Files are limited to 2 MB and 5,000 data rows, and a preview expires after 30 minutes. If identities or membership decisions changed meanwhile, make a fresh preview rather than trying to force the old one through. Roster imports do not appoint managers or silently undo newer rejection or revocation decisions.

Use Dashboard → My Management Workspaces → Club Manager for your assigned clubs. Managers can edit their club's public profile and logo, review membership requests, revoke ordinary memberships and work with roster verification. The club's activation and attribution workflows also provide club-specific review actions where authorized.

A Club Manager cannot appoint, demote or revoke another Club Manager. FOTA administrators handle those assignments. Removing someone's manager role is different from ending their membership: a demoted manager can remain a verified ordinary member.

Membership, management and credit are separate. Management workspaces appear only for responsibilities assigned to your account. Club Manager access is limited to the assigned club; Fair Manager access is limited to the assigned event. News Contributor and staff assignments are separate again. One person can hold several responsibilities without one replacing another.

Confirm that you are signed in to the correct account and viewing the correct club or event. If you need an assignment corrected, use Contact with your member number and the relevant page link. An ordinary membership request cannot grant that access.

There is no self-service leave-club button. Ask the Club Manager or a FOTA administrator to revoke the FOTA membership relationship. This does not erase past accepted credit or contact history and does not cancel membership in an external club system.

Use Log Activation with an email-verified account. Select the existing event, enter the station callsign and UTC start and end times, and choose the status, planned bands, modes and any notes. A band is a radio frequency range, such as 40 metres; a mode is the way the contact is made, such as voice, Morse code or a digital mode.

UTC is the common time reference used by FOTA. Convert local time before entering it; the displayed UTC fields are not automatically interpreted as your local timezone. Check both the calendar date and the time, especially around midnight. Planned bands and modes describe the plan, not proof of what anyone operated.

Select an eligible club in Organizing Club and provide the requested reason. A verified member can propose the relationship for that club's manager to review. A manager of the selected club can confirm it immediately.

This relationship concerns that activation, not every activation at the event. An event's list of associated clubs is not a substitute for it. Confirmation does not give the club automatic contact credit or its members personal operator credit.

An activation manager can propose participants by callsign, with roles such as operator, organizer, station manager, logger or support crew. A registered person whose verified callsign is connected to the proposal reviews it in Dashboard → Participation proposals and confirms or disputes it.

A callsign without a verified account connection can be recorded as callsign-only participation. It does not establish a verified person's account credit. Only confirmed participants are shown in the public participant list. Another registered participant normally confirms their own proposal; historical exceptions require authorized administrative review.

No. Participation says you took part in a particular role. Contact attribution says who operated each individual contact. Confirming one does not confirm the other.

Confirmed completed participation in an eligible operator, organizer or station manager role can support activation-level Activator recognition. Other awards apply their own role and evidence rules. Logger or support-crew participation is not a blanket personal-contact or band-credit entitlement.

Authorized activation owners and managers can start logs. A confirmed operator participant connected to a verified account can open their own log. A verified member of the confirmed organizing club can also open a separate log when an activation manager explicitly enables member logging.

Use Start an Activation Log or the activation's log controls. View My Activation Log opens your log; View Managed Activation Logs lists logs within your current access. One account has one log container per activation; starting again opens the existing one. Several accounts can have separate containers under the same activation. Ordinary club membership does not give you access to everyone else's logs.

Starting a log does not itself log a contact or assign operator or club credit. If the action is unavailable, check your participant or membership status, whether the organizing relationship is confirmed, whether member logging is enabled and whether the activation has ended or been cancelled.

Owners and current activation managers use Edit Activation on the activation page. Ordinary planned-detail edits are allowed while the activation is Scheduled. Completion and cancellation are separate decisions. An ended activation or a lifecycle mistake needs the reviewed correction workflow; managers can request a correction with a reason.

A Scheduled activation can appear completed after its schedule and grace period pass, but that display does not record an explicit completion decision. An Active activation does not automatically finish just because time passed. Awards requiring completed activations need the saved status to be Completed. If the normal completion control is no longer available, request a reviewed correction. Marking spots QRT (off the air) is not the same as completing the activation.

Authorized historical entry is supported. Starting a new log for a Completed activation requires a historical reason. Entry through an existing activation log can also require that reason after completion. Cancelled activations require an explicit, reasoned administrator correction for new contacts. Having an old log or an earlier import preview does not bypass the current status checks.

Every contact associated with an activation must be within the inclusive window from 72 elapsed hours before its UTC start to 72 elapsed hours after its UTC end. Both schedule values must be valid, with the end at or after the start. For example, a September 20 activation from 12:00 to 18:00 UTC has a contact window from September 17 at 12:00 through September 23 at 18:00 UTC. That is a validation window, not an instruction to invent contact times.

Administrators cannot waive the contact-time window. If the stored activation schedule is wrong, an authorized administrator must review and save that schedule correction before you create a fresh import preview or retry entry. Existing contacts are not rewritten automatically by a schedule correction.

A spot is a recent report of a station's operating frequency and mode. Open Spots, filter by the available band, mode or location controls, and follow a report to its activation. A spot helps you find activity; it does not record a QSO, confirm a contact or award credit.

Sign in with an email-verified account, select an eligible published activation and enter its frequency, band, mode and an optional short comment. Respot adds a fresh report. The board normally shows the latest report for an activation rather than every repeated report.

Check the units: spotting frequency is entered in kHz, so 7.200 MHz is 7,200 kHz. Use a supported band and mode. If you hit a submission limit, wait before trying again.

A Scheduled activation is spottable from two hours before its start through two hours after its end, inclusive. An Active activation is spottable. Completed and Cancelled activations are not. An unpublished activation is not available for public spotting either.

Check the UTC schedule and status. Use the correction workflow if the record is wrong; an unavailable activation in the picker is not fixed by repeatedly submitting the form.

QRT means the station has stopped transmitting. The QRT control is available to the account recorded as the activation operator and staff with spot-moderation permission. Club Manager access alone does not grant this control. It marks the activation's current spots off the air. Old spots also expire according to the site's settings.

QRT does not delete contacts, cancel the event or record a Completed activation. If you are a hunter without QRT authority, you cannot end someone else's spots through that control.

Use Log Contact or Import Log with the Hunter perspective. Enter the FOTA station you actually contacted and the real UTC time, band and mode. Hunter entry requires your own currently verified callsign. Associate the correct event or activation where applicable; an unrelated or unassociated contact does not establish qualifying event credit just by being in a logbook.

You can record your side before the activator has entered theirs. Until an independent matching record exists, it is not corroborated evidence. Posting a spot is not a substitute for logging the contact.

Open the activation and choose Log Contacts, or open your activation log. This carries the activation and event context into the logger. Enter the worked station's callsign, band, mode and UTC date/time. Signal reports and other available fields can be added as needed. Now fills the current UTC time; it is inappropriate for a contact that happened earlier.

Choose the individual-operator option deliberately. Use I operated this contact only for contacts you personally made. Leave unknown operators unknown until the attribution can be established. Choose optional club credit separately.

ADIF is the Amateur Data Interchange Format used to exchange radio logs. Export an .adi or .adif file from your logging software, then use Import Log. FOTA accepts files up to 2 MB and 5,000 records; split larger files into smaller exports. A spreadsheet renamed with an .adi extension is not ADIF.

The import maps contact callsigns, dates/times, bands or frequencies, modes, signal reports and supported station/operator fields. ADIF frequencies use MHz; FOTA converts them for its kHz fields. Inspect the preview for missing or unsupported values rather than assuming every logger's export is identical.

1. Select the correct Activator or Hunter perspective.
2. Select the correct activation or enter through its log. Confirm the event, station and log owner shown. An import with no association can still be stored, but it does not automatically acquire an event relationship.
3. Choose Mixed or unknown operators, Use each record's OPERATOR value, All selected contacts were operated by me, Assign by callsign, or the unconnected-callsign option as appropriate.
4. Choose optional Credit this activity to a club separately. Ordinary submission requires your verified FOTA membership in that club.
5. Choose Upload & Preview. Review every status, the UTC times, association, operator choice, duplicates and included rows before Confirm Import.

STATION_CALLSIGN means the station used. OPERATOR means the individual at the controls. OWNER_CALLSIGN, where present in imported evidence, is another station-ownership field; it is not a replacement for individual operation. The uploader is recorded independently. Explicit imported station callsigns are preserved; a missing station can use the displayed activation station.

If two people shared a shift, do not apply All selected contacts were operated by me to the entire file. Use trustworthy per-record operator information or leave attribution unknown and review the contacts afterwards.

Ready rows passed the preview checks. Warning rows need attention, for example a possible duplicate. Duplicate rows match an existing contact under FOTA's duplicate checks and default to skipped. Rejected rows have errors and cannot be imported in that state.

Duplicate detection is a review aid, not a guarantee that two rows describe the same contact. Check the callsign, activation, band, mode and UTC time. Possible duplicates can be included after review; definite duplicates are reviewable too. FOTA does not delete existing contacts because it found a duplicate in your file.

Ordinary rejected rows are counted separately from imported and skipped rows. An activation-window error blocks the entire batch, even if you try to deselect that row. Correct the source data or have the incorrect activation schedule reviewed, then create a new preview. Do not remove a valid activation association just to bypass the error.

No. Uploading creates a preview; Confirm Import performs the import. Confirmation rechecks current permissions, identities, activation status and schedule. If an intended included row fails those checks while saving, the selected import is rolled back rather than partly committed.

Read the final imported, skipped and rejected counts and check Import History. If a connection fails or the result is unclear, check history and the Logbook before uploading again. Confirming the same completed preview does not import it twice, but creating new uploads can still leave duplicates for you to review. If the records or permissions changed, create a fresh preview and review it again.

Use the rollback action in Import History where available. Rollback can void an unchanged imported batch while keeping its original evidence and history. It is not permanent deletion.

Later contact edits, attribution proposals or decisions, participation changes and other dependent history can block rollback. Older batches without a reliable rollback baseline are also refused. A conflict prevents the whole rollback; it does not silently remove only the easy rows. Use the listed conflicts to request review. Undoing a bulk operator assignment is a separate action and does not undo the import.

Use Logbook filters for the activation/log, relationship to the contacts, station or operator callsign, operator state, import batch, date/time, band, mode, perspective or credited club. The My relationship choices distinguish contacts you own or manage, contacts you personally operated, Hunter contacts and management access. Changing that filter can change the count.

CSV and ADIF exports use the selected filters across all matching records you are authorized to export, not just the visible page. A PDF contact report is available for a selected authorized activation log and can use the same filters. It is a report, not an award certificate. Empty logs can produce an empty report.

Direct logbook synchronization with those services and offline FOTA logging are not implemented. Use ADIF import/export for file exchange. QRZ callsign validation is a different feature from QRZ logbook synchronization.

FOTA also has an external interface for authorized partner logging apps, but that does not mean any particular app or account is connected. Check an actual integration before relying on it. If you need to log without an internet connection, keep your records in your own logger and import them when you can access FOTA.

Uploading or owning a log does not establish personal operation. Check the contact's current operator attribution, not just the station callsign or uploader name.

Use Manage Activation Operators from the Logbook or activation's contact log if you have authority to manage those records. A log can be complete as station history while its operators still need review.

In Manage Activation Operators, select the activation and the relevant contacts or shifts. Check UTC times, station and existing attribution. Stage the correct callsigns, review the preview and confirm with the requested reason. Larger changes can use the available filtered bulk workflow.

Explicit self-attribution requires your verified callsign. Assigning another registered operator creates a proposal for that person, not immediate personal credit. An unconnected callsign remains callsign-only. Original imported evidence is kept alongside later attribution decisions.

Review operator proposals in the Dashboard or Logbook review controls and participation proposals in Dashboard → Participation proposals. Confirm only what you recognize. Dispute incorrect proposals and give a reason. Check the activation, station, times and proposed role before using any group confirmation control.

Operator confirmation does not confirm an activation-participation proposal, and participation confirmation does not assign contacts. If a proposal no longer matches your verified callsign, or it changed since you opened it, reload and ask the manager or staff to review it rather than confirming a different person's record.

Organizing-club confirmation does not populate contact credit. Check whether the contact actually names the credited club and whether its current credit decision is accepted. For an ordinary new entry or import, the submitting account must have verified FOTA membership in the selected club. A pending membership request is not enough.

The record keeps the credit decision and eligibility evidence from submission or later review. Joining a club later does not automatically rewrite old contacts, and leaving a club does not automatically erase accepted history. Club Managers have Club attribution review controls; request a specific review when a choice is missing or wrong. Moving credit between clubs requires the appropriate authority over both clubs or an authorized administrator.

A logged contact and a qualifying award contact are different. Hunter rules that require corroboration need independent records from opposite sides that uniquely match the station/callsign pair, the same published event and reference, band, compatible mode and a UTC time within 15 minutes. The hunter must be connected to the correct verified account. Shared log ownership or submission by the same person cannot manufacture independent confirmation.

Check your own Hunter perspective, verified callsign, event association and contact details. Ask the other station to check its actual record. Missing, ambiguous, edited or voided counterpart records can prevent or remove current corroboration. Do not duplicate contacts to try to force a match.

No. Current verification and callsign changes do not automatically claim or transfer historical hunter attribution. Older history can be uncertain, especially when it was never connected to an account. Ask staff to review specific records with the callsign, date, station, event and contact references. The current history-check path reports a need for review; it does not silently transfer ownership.

Open the contact in the private Logbook. Ordinary field editing is available to its submitter, the account linked as its activator or hunter, or staff with contact-moderation permission. Having management access to operator attribution does not automatically allow you to edit every contact field. Use attribution controls for the operator or credited club rather than treating an ordinary field edit as a credit decision. The logger's Undo and contact removal actions void a record: they exclude it from active totals while preserving its history.

Ordinary contact editing cannot move the record to a different activation or transfer its log ownership. If you selected the wrong activation, contact the manager or staff with the affected contact references so the correction can be reviewed. Do not edit a real contact's time merely to fit another schedule.

Someone may have edited the record, reviewed a proposal or changed an identity or permission since you opened it. FOTA checks that a decision still applies to the current record. Reload and review the latest information, then create a fresh preview if needed. Attribution previews can expire after five minutes.

A selected group is checked as a whole. If one contact changed or is outside your authority, the group can be rejected without applying any of its changes. Narrow the selection only after understanding the reported problem. Reasons and earlier decisions remain in the history, including when a permitted restoration adds a new decision based on an earlier one.

Send the contact or activation link and a clear explanation to its authorized manager or through Contact. Proposed operators can dispute their current proposals. Managers and authorized staff have review, correction, removal and restoration actions within their scope. A dispute records disagreement; it is not proof that either person is right.

There is no universal self-service button to overwrite another person's accepted history. Staff may need to review original logs and the decision history. Contact corrections do not automatically erase an already issued award or certificate; those have separate review records.

An activation can aggregate contacts from several people's logs. Your filtered log shows a different selection. Personal operation counts depend on confirmed operator attribution, and award progress adds the award's own evidence rules. Unknown operators can remain in station totals without becoming personal operator credit.

Older activations can also have a manually entered summary count alongside detailed contacts. A partial imported log does not prove the old summary was wrong. Where Sync Count From Log is offered, review the difference before using it; reconciling a count does not identify operators or establish an award. Confirmed imports and import rollbacks also attempt to sync the activation's summary when the submitting account has that permission. Check the totals afterwards, especially when importing only part of an older log. Keep contact references and the filters used when asking about a discrepancy.

Open Awards to see the awards currently offered and read each award's published criteria. Awards differ by recipient, activity and evidence: some are individual, some are for clubs, and some require manual review. There is no single contact threshold or participation rule that applies to every award.

Automatic evaluation follows relevant saved changes and can finish after the original save. A valid log entry alone is not a promise of an immediate award. If progress or an award remains missing, check the evidence first and then contact staff with the award and relevant records. Manually reviewed awards need an authorized decision with a reason and evidence; they are not a way to bypass an automatic award's rules.

Check the award's recipient and criteria, then the relevant records:

• Is the event published and associated with the correct FOTA reference?
• If completion is required, is the activation explicitly saved as Completed?
• Are contacts active, with correct UTC times, bands and modes?
• For personal operation, is attribution confirmed to your verified account?
• For Hunter evidence, are the required independent matching contacts present?
• For club evidence, is the correct club's credit accepted?
• Are you comparing actual operated bands with the award, rather than planned bands, an upload total or a participant list?

If these look right, include the award link, your member number or club link, contact references and any import result in a help request. Do not repeatedly reimport the same activity to trigger an award.

No. Midway Master is an Activator award for confirmed personal operation on at least six qualifying bands within one published, explicitly Completed activation. Each counted band needs qualifying contact evidence. Contacts in different logs can contribute when they belong to that same activation and confirmed operator; separate activations cannot be combined for this rule.

Band Hopper is a Hunter award based on its separate corroborated Hunter evidence across six bands. Planning six bands, managing a six-band station or uploading its log does not establish either individual's achievement.

They are separate recognition and display features. Use Account Settings → Profile Recognition to preview and select the decorations currently available to you. A locked choice needs its own eligibility or an authorized recognition decision. Some artwork may be unavailable.

Selecting a decoration does not create an award, certificate, membership, management permission or contact credit. For example, confirmed organizer participation can support Activator profile recognition without proving that the organizer personally operated every contact.

FOTA preserves award history. Retirement stops future automatic earning under that definition. Evidence changes can require review, but do not automatically delete the earlier grant. Revocation or correction is a separate authorized decision with history.

The ordinary public Awards collection shows current supported awards. Historical, retired, revoked or unsupported records can instead appear in the owner's or authorized administrator's history with their status. Absence from the ordinary public collection does not by itself mean the record was erased. Missing artwork can use a text presentation rather than inventing a new award.

An earned award and an issued certificate are separate records. Issuing a certificate also requires an approved template. If you see Certificate unavailable. Approved template not yet available., a certificate cannot be issued for that award through the current action.

An award can still be earned and displayed. A badge, sample or source image does not constitute an approved certificate, and there is no promised date for template availability. A PDF activation log report is not an award certificate.

Use that certificate's public verification link, or its QR code if present. Verification describes the actual issued record and status. A sample image or an award's page is not proof of issuance. Revoked, superseded or retired status must be read alongside any historical certificate.

Where an existing certificate offers Download certificate (HTML), it is a portable HTML document, not a direct PDF or PNG download. Some historical records cannot offer a download because their required artwork or recorded assets are unavailable; that does not erase the verification record.

Recipient and certificate details are frozen when issued. Changing a profile does not rewrite an old certificate. Ask staff to review an error using its verification link. Replacement is subject to the same template and authority requirements. An unavailable template cannot be bypassed by changing your profile.

You can read published forum content without an account. To start topics or reply, sign in and verify both your account email and callsign. Open the relevant board or topic and use its posting form.

A closed topic does not accept replies. Forum restrictions can also remove participation controls. If a submission fails, read the error and check the topic before trying again. Predictable form errors preserve entered text; selected image files must be chosen again.

If Edit is available on your own topic or reply, use it to correct your text. If the control is missing or the change cannot be saved, use Report where available, or Contact, with the post link and the correction you need.

If you need a published post or an individual photo removed and no working removal control is available, use the same help route. Identify the particular post or photo so the reviewer can understand the request. Removing a photo from the selection before submitting a post is a separate action.

New topics and replies accept up to 30 images, with 5 MB per image and 60 MB total. Supported image formats are JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP and AVIF, subject to the site's allowed formats and upload limits. SVG and arbitrary non-image files are not accepted. The contents must be a real supported image; renaming a file does not convert it.

Review the selected images and use Remove to remove unwanted files before submitting. That control changes the pending selection, not a published post. Image previews link to their originals. GIF previews can retain animation.

Check format, individual size, total size and image count. Try a smaller valid image or a smaller batch. A server upload limit can be lower than the FOTA limit. For profile photos and club logos, the image limit is also up to 5 MB, subject to the site's effective limit.

The forum rejects a failed image batch rather than deliberately publishing a partial set. Review the error, confirm whether the post exists, and reselect your files before retrying. If a valid batch repeatedly fails, send the error, number of images and approximate sizes through Contact. Do not include private images in a public troubleshooting post.

Profile and club image controls upload images for the account or club you are authorized to manage. They do not provide unrestricted access to everyone else's uploads or to the site's Media Library.

Use Report on the topic or reply and explain the issue. Reports go through forum moderation. They are different from general account or logging help requests. Moderators can review reports, hide or restore content, move or close topics and apply forum restrictions within their authority.

A forum timeout lasts until its stated UTC expiry; a forum ban has no set expiry. These restrictions affect forum participation, including edits and reactions, while ordinary account and logging functions retain their own permissions. A separate platform ban blocks authentication and authenticated actions. If you need a restriction reviewed or cannot sign in, use Contact.

No. Your private Logbook is available according to ownership, operator/hunter relationships and authorized management permissions. A public profile or activation can show activity summaries without publishing the full contact log.

Sharing an activation's detailed log is a separate opt-in on that activation. Public recent-contact cards also respect that activation sharing choice. Your personal public log summary has its own opt-in, off by default; it shows aggregates and links to activations rather than a full list of worked callsigns. Enabling it does not turn on every activation's detailed log. Public log views omit private notes and original raw import evidence.

These sharing controls do not retract downloads, screenshots or copies already made by other people. Public forum images link to original image files; hiding a post should not be treated as a promise that every copy or file URL has been removed.

Use Contact with the relevant account or public-page link and explain what you want reviewed. Refer to the site's Privacy Policy for its published terms. Changing what is visible on a page is different from requesting deletion of account data, so describe the information and action involved. The current help form does not provide a general self-service erase-account-and-history action.

Open Contact and fill in your name, reply email, subject and message. You can use it while signed out, including when you cannot get into your account. The form does not provide a tracked support case or support-case status page.

The form limits message length and repeated submissions. If sending fails, check the error and try again later; use a direct address only if the site actually publishes one. A successful send message does not confirm inbox delivery or that a person has read it. Do not reply to automated verification mail expecting help.

Give the task you were trying to complete, what happened and what you expected. Include your FOTA member number or public profile link if available, the relevant event/club/activation link, and contact references such as FOTA-Q-00000001 when the problem concerns a log. Include the import result or batch reference when relevant, the error text, approximate UTC time and browser or device details for display or access failures.

For missing credit, say whether you mean personal operator, hunter, club, participation or award credit. Identify the affected records rather than asking staff to infer them from a total. Do not send passwords, verification tokens, reset links or provider API credentials. The current Contact form has no attachment upload; describe the issue and let the reviewer request any additional evidence through an appropriate channel.