Mission logger

Records every team member’s track during a search, for after-action review and reports. Lives at https://tak.qsartak.org/callouts/ — or just use the team tools page. Sign in with your own QSAR account, the same one you use on the shared map. Every mission records who filed it.

Not the same thing: the TAK web dashboard has its own “Missions” page with a “New Mission” popup. That’s a built-in map-data-sharing feature of the server software, unrelated to this logger. Logging a callout always starts at tak.qsartak.org/callouts/.

During a callout

1. Open the missions page → type a mission name (e.g. “Overdue boater — Arolik”) → Start mission. Incident number, IC, and notes are optional but make reports better.

   Lost person details: the form has the same sections as our old SAR survey (subject, clothing, health, last seen, trip plan, vehicle). All optional — start the mission fast, add details as they come in by the phone.

   More than one missing person? (two people in a boat, a hunting pair…) Each subject gets their own identity/clothing/health sections — press ”+ Add another subject” below Subject 1 for each additional person. The trip, vehicle, and Last Known Point are shared by the whole mission.

   Last Known Point: open the Last seen section and tap the map at the spot — the coordinates fill in automatically (no typing, no typos). Drag the pin to nudge it. The layers button adds the NOAA marine chart overlay for water locations. You can still type/correct lat, lon by hand in the box below the map — the pin follows. When you start the mission, an “LKP” marker drops on everyone’s map automatically — the whole team sees the search anchor without anyone placing it by hand. It stays on the map for 7 days.

   Searching for someone carrying our gear? If the subject has a team Somewear beacon (or is on ATAK), use the “Use a team asset’s last position” dropdown above the map — it lists every device the server has heard from in the last 7 days, freshest first, and fills in their last reported spot as the LKP. Check the age next to the name: “40 min ago” is a live fix; “3 d ago” just means that’s where the beacon last reported before it went quiet — still the right starting point, but treat it as a lead, not a location.

2. Run the search normally. Nothing else to do — everyone’s positions are being recorded by the server anyway.
3. When the team stands down: Stop & save tracks. That freezes every track from the mission window into a permanent record.

Stopped it too early? Press Reactivate on the mission. It goes back to OPEN, the LKP returns to everyone’s map, and the team is paged again — same mission, same record, no re-typing. The final tracks will still cover the whole callout including the gap. (Archived missions must be unarchived first.)

Start it when the callout begins — the record covers the time between start and stop. (Forgot to start it? Start and stop one after the fact — it captures history — but don’t wait days: the server clears old raw data on a schedule.)

Reviewing, correcting, and cleaning up

Click any mission’s name on the missions page to open its record:

• The full incident record — every detail entered, plus status and times.
• The tracks on a map — each searcher in their own color, the LKP marker, with the NOAA chart overlay available. Tap a track for who it was and how many reports.
• Edit — fix names, incident numbers, or any lost-person detail after the fact. Corrections flow into the KML/GeoJSON downloads too.
• Moving the last known point — open Lost person — Last seen in the Edit record form. You get a map: tap it to place the point, drag the pin to nudge it, or type coordinates — all three stay in step. Press Save changes and the new point goes out to everyone’s phones and tablets, and moves on the mission’s own map and downloads. (The map is inside that collapsed section — open the section first or you won’t see it.)
• Archive (admins) — moves a finished mission out of the main list into Archived missions (link at the bottom of the missions page). Nothing is lost: the record and its KML/GeoJSON downloads stay available, and it can be unarchived any time. Use this to keep the everyday list short — real missions get archived, never deleted.
• Delete (admins) — permanently removes a mission and its tracks. For tests and false alarms only; it asks you to confirm.

Cleaning up map pins

The Map pins tab lists every marker the server is holding — dropped pins, leftovers from tests, old markers. Anyone on the team can tidy up:

1. Tick the pins that shouldn’t be there and press Remove selected from map. They’re removed from the server and disappear from every connected device.
2. Some rows are labeled instead of removable:
   • auto-restores — buoy and drone markers recreate themselves; removing them is pointless, so don’t bother.
   • open callout — an active mission’s LKP can’t be removed here; stop the mission when the team stands down.
   • CASEVAC mirror — delete the CASEVAC itself in the dashboard.
3. Pin still showing on someone’s phone or iPad? Devices that were offline when a pin was removed keep showing it (iTAK especially). With that device connected, press Sweep removed pins again — it re-broadcasts every past removal, and the ghosts clear.

After the mission

Each stopped mission has two downloads:

• KML — opens in Google Earth; the LKP marker plus one folder per person with their track line and start/end markers. Good for review meetings and attaching to incident reports.
• GeoJSON — drops straight into ArcGIS, for anyone continuing the Esri workflow.

Wave buoys and chat messages are automatically left out — the record is people and vehicles (searchers, beacons, the drone).