A bit late to the party but here is my .02 on the matter.? FWIW, I have 5500+ total contacts with POTA activators and ~2200 confirmed parks.
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The first issue is that the POTA database is very dynamic with new parks being added continuously, sometimes literally daily.? For example, there are about 8 areas that I could submit today within 15 miles of my QTH that would be eligible to be issued a POTA number.? I have on 3 occasions submitted an area and usually within a few hours they have been assigned a POTA number.? I would think that it would be a nightmare to keep such an organic database up to date.? Not sure, but I pretty sure that there are multiple individuals that have the authority and ability to add new POTA entities.? Not to mention that entities get deactivated (deleted) from time to time.? All of this, IMHO, leads me to believe that it would be an exercise in frustration to even be able to utilize such a database much less keep it up to date.
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The second issue it that it is somewhat common for an activation counting for multiple parks.? The operator N2NWK is famous for his five-fer and six-fer activations in the Washington DC area.? If a dedicated POTA field is implemented, you would probably need to have at a minimum 4 of them per QSO like you do with the grid squares (Grid 1 - Grid 4).? Spots on the DXcluster system rarely indicated more than one POTA entity, and if they do there is no set format on how they are indicated.
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Given all of that, my suggestion is the following:
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1)? Only deal with whether or not you have worked that entity on any band or mode.? Don't worry about different bands and/or modes - period.
2)? An organic database isn't needed - do what the POTAPlus Chrome extension does - parses the spots on the pota.app as well as you POTA records on their database to determine ATNO status.??
3)? Extract the POTA data from other spots like what DXKeeper does already when you have the USERDEFINED_0 as POTA and like GridTracker does for WSJT modes and check it like #2 above.
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Bottom line, I don't think you need to do anything dealing with an organic database within DXLab - just determine if it is an ATNO from your POTA records based on spot data.
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Dennis - WB0WAO
