Operating Skills · Beginner

LLOTA — Lakes & Lagoons On The Air

A young program from Chile, now in 35 countries. Close to POTA in feel, and it stacks with it.

~10 min · 0/0 required steps

What LLOTA is

Lagos y Lagunas On The Air — Lakes and Lagoons On The Air. A portable operating program built around bodies of water rather than parks or summits. It started in Chile, created by Gabriel CE3GRU and Nelson CA3LVK, and has spread to around 35 countries. It's young, it's growing fast, and the reference database is still filling in — which is part of the appeal. If you already do POTA, this will feel immediately familiar.

Practice goal

The stacking angle: a lake inside a park is one trip and two programs. Plenty of POTA references contain or border a qualifying body of water. Same drive, same setup, same contacts.

1 · The rules

	LLOTA
Minimum contacts	10 QSOs for a valid activation
Location	Within 200 m of the water's edge
Vehicles	Static operation is fine. No operating while moving
Private land	Not without permission
Who submits logs	Activators only. Hunters never upload — same as POTA
Self-spotting	Permitted, and expected. Update your spot when you change band or frequency
Spot expiry	Spots drop off after 30 minutes of inactivity

Remember

Notice how close this is to POTA — 10 QSOs, self-spotting, activators log and hunters don't. If you can run a park activation you can run a LLOTA one. The 200 m water rule replaces the park boundary, and that's most of the difference.

2 · Getting set up

Register at llota.app — it uses a Google account to sign in
Verify your callsign and complete your profile
Browse the reference catalogue on the map or list to find water near you
Operate, making at least 10 contacts within 200 m of the water's edge
Upload your ADIF from your profile

3 · The ADIF fields — get these right

This is the practical detail that trips people up, because your logger needs to write LLOTA-specific fields for the upload to be credited.

Field	Value
MY_SIG	LLOTA
MY_SIG_INFO	the reference code, e.g. LLCL-0001

Reference codes follow LL + country code + number — LLCL-0001 is Chile
Ham2K Polo already supports LLOTA directly
If your logger doesn't know LLOTA, you can usually set the SIG fields manually before export
Check your ADIF has the fields before uploading, not after

4 · Hunting

Hunters can be anywhere — no location requirement at all
Watch the cluster on llota.app for live activations
Work the station and log it normally
You never upload anything. The system credits you automatically from the activator's log
Awards generate automatically once you meet the requirements

5 · Worth knowing

The program is young — expect the reference database, rules and tooling to keep changing. Re-check before an activation rather than trusting a guide
Much of the official documentation is in Spanish, reflecting its Chilean origins
Countries are onboarded through volunteer representatives. If yours isn't listed, LLOTA actively invites people to email and become the manager for it
There's an active Facebook group where most of the day-to-day discussion happens

On the air

Two things to verify at the source rather than take from here: exactly which bodies of water qualify, and the process for adding one that isn't listed. Both are managed per-country and are the parts most likely to have changed since this was written.

Official sources

LLOTA — llota.app ↗Rules (Reglamento) ↗User Documentation ↗Reference Map ↗Awards ↗

Summarised from llota.app documentation, August 2026. LLOTA is actively developing and parts of its rules are published only in Spanish — verify at the source before relying on anything here.

Summarised from the official LLOTA documentation at llota.app, August 2026. LLOTA is a young and actively changing program, and parts of its rules page are only available in Spanish and render dynamically — some detail here could not be independently verified. Always check llota.app/reglas.html before an activation. HamCompass explains; LLOTA decides.