I have always been wondering how IOTA chasers determine the island location from a reference number. Some island groups include over 100 islands and cover significant areas.

Unfortunately, there are no geographic maps for radio amateur island awards, or at least I have never heard of such maps. I started collecting island coordinate data years ago, and later I decided to create a complete geographic database with coordinates of all islands that count for numerous island awards. In addition to island names and coordinates, I included the reference numbers of the islands according to several island awards, such as IOTA, IIA, DIP, RRA, to name a few. The database can be used to quickly locate an island, and also provides additional information (ref. ID, country, call area, and activation history).

When Afreet Software released their DX Atlas, this gave a new dimension to my project. The database that was partially ready, now could be overlaid on the World map to further accelerate the search. I changed the database format and turned it into an Add-On Database for the DX Atlas software.

DX Atlas is surprisingly fast in processing big data files. Though the standard island list included with the program is only 100 Kb in size, DX Atlas still works fine with my database that is 20 times bigger !!!

IOTA Add-base


Not only the islands, but virtually any kind of data can be displayed on the map in DX Atlas: Antarctic bases, beacons, light houses, mountain peaks and even the location of your friends and regular contacts. DX Atlas with an add-on database can replace your paper maps and atlases and make your search much easier and faster.

I hope the author of DX Atlas will further extend the integration capabilities of his program to support custom add-on maps in addition to add-on databases.

The development and maintenance of the database that currently includes 25,000 islands is a huge piece of work. I am looking forward to cooperating with everyone who is interested in this project. If we join our efforts, we will be able to quickly complete the database and then provide regular updates.

Currently the development of the following databases is in progress:

  • All islands - IOTA and national award programs (For example: IOCA);
  • WABA - Worked All Bases in Antarctica award program;
  • Lighthouse - Lighthouse award program.


    • There is one more opportunity to improve quality of some programs. So for example, appearance of the program DXView additional maps considerably will improve. Judge, what from maps is looked better. And you see it is possible to substitute maps and greater size!!!

    Except for the basic map in the program DXView the very primitive maps of countries-territories are used which can be replaced with best.

    The same completions can subject and some other programs (for example: WLOG2000).



    Hope for your support and participation!!!


    2001, EU6TV
    Nikolay Sukhorukov
    Vitebsk, Rep. of Belarus