Understanding Your Dashboard
Making sense of your statistics, social features, and sync status
The Dashboard is your home base — an at-a-glance view of your activity, what’s happening on the bands, and how your services are doing.
Activity Grid
A GitHub-style grid at the top shows your recent logging history. Each cell is one day: green for activations, blue for hunting/casual contacts, split for both. Tap any cell to see that day’s contacts. Watching the grid fill up is surprisingly motivating.
Your Statistics
Below the grid, your numbers break down by:
- Band — Contacts per band (20m, 40m, 2m, etc.)
- Mode — SSB, CW, FT8, FM, and others
- Country — Unique DXCCDX Century Club - an award for confirming contacts with 100 or more DXCC entities (countries). entities worked (tracking toward 100 for the DXCC award)
- Grid Squares, States, Parks — Progress toward various awards
- QRZ and LoTW Confirmations — Contacts confirmed by each service
Tap any statistic to drill down and see the underlying contacts.
Equipment Usage
A card showing how many contacts you’ve made with each radio, antenna, and other gear — great for comparing setups.
Streaks
Consecutive-day streaks for On-Air, Activation, Hunter, CW, Phone, and Digital activity. See your current streak and all-time best.
Friends on Air
When friends you’ve added are spotted on the bands, they appear here. See a friend? Tune to their frequency and say hello.
Band Openings
Which bands are carrying signals well right now. If 20 meters is lit up with activity, that’s where you want to be.
DXpeditions
Active and upcoming DXpeditions — organized trips to rare locations. Plan ahead so you can work them and add new countries to your log.
POTA Awards Progress
Track how close you are to earning POTA activator or hunter awards.
Smart Spot Needs
Carrier Wave watches the spots (real-time reports of who’s on the air) and highlights stations that would give you a new country, state, or park. It takes the guesswork out of who to call next.
Conditions
Solar data — K-index, SFI, A-index — with sparkline trends. Higher SFI generally means better long-distance conditions. Tap for full history.
Service Status
Connected services show colored status dots:
| Indicator | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Synced and current |
| Yellow | Sync in progress |
| Red | Error — tap for details |
| Gray | Not configured |
Beyond the Dashboard
As you explore Carrier Wave, you’ll find more:
- Map Tab — Contacts on a world map, plus parks and summits
- Events — Local ham radio events, club meetings, contests
- Challenges — Competitive events to motivate trying new things
- Band Plan Chart — Visual frequency allocation reference for your license class
- Session Timeline — Replay an activation on a map
- Widgets — Home screen widgets for solar conditions, spots, and stats
- watchOS App — Companion Apple Watch app for the field
- CW Transcription — Decode Morse code in real time
- WebSDR — Listen to remote radios through the app
What’s Next?
You now understand the basics of Carrier Wave! For complete documentation, explore the Reference Manual .
Popular next steps:
- Search your logs with a powerful query language
- Upload POTA activations or try rove mode
- Set up the Activity Log for daily hunter tracking
- Explore the Map to see your contacts worldwide
- Add Widgets to your home screen
- Browse the Glossary when you hit an unfamiliar term