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About

APRS OTA combines the vibe of a Parks on the Air activation with native APRS messaging. Find an operator on the air, send one message and a position report to work them, and your contact is logged, mapped, and scored here as it happens.

How it works

There are two parts. This website, and an APRS message bot named OTA. You use the service by sending APRS messages to the bot, which also listens for the position beacons you send. The website shows what passed between you, as it happens.

You do not create an account here, and you cannot. Your callsign is your identity. If you transmit from multiple SSIDs, all the traffic will be consolidated on the page of your base callsign. Check it out at https://aprsota.org/YOURCALL.

Get started Read the handbook See who is on the air

The rules

  1. Be nice.
  2. Have fun.
  3. When you host an op, all your messages must be sent and received via RF. Reaching the bot means transiting APRS-IS, which is fine. The first leg out and the last leg in have to happen over radio waves.

The introduction has the long version of rule 3, and why it is the only rule with any teeth.

Who

Built in Utah, USA by Jared K0TFU. The idea started as a proposal posted to the APRS community, which is preserved as radiogram 1.

Come say hello on Discord, or send me an email.

Credits

APRS OTA uses many projects from the open source community, and would not be possible without the many contributors to these other projects.

Artwork

The Two Hats stamp

Two “Baseball Cap” drawings by InYoung Park, from the Noun Project.

The drawings are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows them to be shared and adapted for any purpose, including commercially, as long as the creator is credited. This is that credit.

The Nessie stamp and Nessie’s Reunion

“Loch Ness Monster” by jon trillana, from the Noun Project.

The drawing is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows it to be shared and adapted for any purpose, including commercially, as long as the creator is credited. This is that credit.

The Davy Jones and Full Fathom Five stamps

The anchor on both is “Anchor” by Amethyst Studio, and the fish on Full Fathom Five is “Fish” by Kevin, both from the Noun Project.

Both drawings are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows them to be shared and adapted for any purpose, including commercially, as long as the creator is credited. This is that credit.

Interface icons

Lucide.

The Lucide icon set is Copyright (c) 2026 Lucide Icons and Contributors, and the icons it inherits from Feather are Copyright (c) 2013-present Cole Bemis. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

Country flags

flag-icons by Panayiotis Lipiridis.

flag-icons is Copyright (c) 2013 Panayiotis Lipiridis. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and sell it, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are included in all copies.

Type

B612

The B612 Project authors, for Airbus and PolarSys.

B612 is Copyright 2012 The B612 Project Authors, licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. The font may be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely, provided it is not sold on its own and any modified version carries a different name.

IBM Plex Mono

IBM.

IBM Plex Mono is Copyright © 2017 IBM Corp., with Reserved Font Name “Plex”, licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. The font may be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely, provided it is not sold on its own and any modified version carries a different name.

Maps and data

Map tiles

© OpenStreetMap contributors.

The map data is licensed under the Open Database License. It may be used, shared and adapted freely, provided OpenStreetMap and its contributors are credited and any database derived from it is offered under the same terms.

Country and marine boundaries

Natural Earth, 1:10m.

Natural Earth places its data in the public domain. No permission is needed and no credit is required, but it is given here anyway.

Lakes

HydroLAKES v1.0, selected and simplified.

HydroLAKES is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows the data to be shared and adapted for any purpose, including commercially, as long as it is credited. The citation below is that credit.

Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., Schmitt, O. (2016). Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach. Nature Communications, 7: 13603.

Code

Pico CSS

Pico v2.1.1.

Pico CSS is Copyright (c) 2019-2025 Pico. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and sell it, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are included in all copies.

Leaflet

Leaflet v1.9.4.

Leaflet is Copyright (c) 2010-2023 Vladimir Agafonkin and Copyright (c) 2010-2011 CloudMade. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the copyright notice, the list of conditions, and the disclaimer are retained.

Ruby on Rails

Rails, with Hotwire, Propshaft, and Solid Queue.

Rails is Copyright (c) David Heinemeier Hansson. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and sell it, provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are included in all copies.