CW Battle Royale Rules & Scoring

💎 Scoring

Only CW QSOs count. Every CW QSO your logger sends me is scored the moment it arrives.

The order is: add up base, first contact and POTA/SOTA, multiply by band, multiply by Happy Hour, then add any bounty. Each multiplying step rounds down to a whole number.

✅ Verification

CW QSOs are typed into a logger, so I need a way to know they happened on the air. Every QSO gets one of these labels, shown next to it on the site:

A QSO that later becomes verified gets its full points.

Your player page shows your verified percentage. An account with a very low verified rate gets a closer look (see Fair play).

⚡ Happy Hours & 2x events

• Aussie Happy Hour: 07:00 to 07:59 UTC, every day, ×2.
• Evening Happy Hour: 17:00 to 17:59 UTC (through 17:59:59), every day, ×2.
• ATH Happy Hour: when the number of players who've logged a QSO today beats the all-time high, the next hour is ×2 for everyone. It can only trigger once per UTC day. The current record is on the Dashboard.
• Double Happy Hour: if an ATH Happy Hour overlaps a scheduled one, it's ×4.

Both scheduled Happy Hours are open to every player, wherever you are. Scheduled Happy Hours go by the time of the QSO.

Weekly CW sessions and contest weekends

The CW world already has busy times on the calendar, so we join in. During these the game runs at ×2 too:

• CWops CWT sessions: short one-hour weekly sprints, several times a week. Fast and friendly.
• K1USN Slow Speed Test (SST): one-hour weekly sessions at 20 WPM or slower. Perfect if you're new to CW.
• Big CW contest weekends such as CQ WW CW, ARRL Sweepstakes CW, ARRL DX CW and others.

The exact times are on the 2x Events page, and the site shows a banner while one is running. You don't have to send the contest exchange to score here, but you'll make more QSOs if you do, so join in.

🎯 Daily bounties

• At 00:00 UTC I pick 3 target countries for the new day, using the full previous day through 23:59:59: one easy 🟢, one medium 🟡 and one hard 🔴. The difficulty comes from how often players worked each country over the last 30 days.
• Your first QSO of the day with each target country earns +10. That's up to +30 a day.
• The +10 is flat. Happy Hour and multipliers don't touch it.
• A QSO that earns a bounty can't be stolen, including its normal points. It can still steal from other players as usual.
• Everyone can claim every bounty. It's not a race.
• The country comes from the callsign prefix. The USA is never a target, yesterday's targets aren't repeated, and a country needs at least 10 different stations worked in the last 30 days to be picked.
• Today's targets, and who has claimed them, are on the Dashboard.

🔥 Streaks

• A streak day is a UTC day with at least 5 QSOs that scored points. A QSO that later got stolen still counts. Duplicate penalties don't.
• Streak days in a row build your streak. Miss a day and it starts over.
• Your streak stays alive until the end of today, so you have until 23:59 UTC to make today's 5.
• Current and best streaks are on your player page and the Streaks board. Milestones (7, 14, 30, 67, 100, 150, 200 and 365 days) earn awards.

⚠️ Duplicates

Logging the same station on the same band twice in one UTC day is a duplicate. The duplicate scores minus 2 times what it would have earned. A repeat never gets the +4 first contact bonus, so it's usually small.

• If the same QSO arrives twice within a few seconds (for example from two programs), I ignore the second copy. No penalty.
• Edits aren't duplicates. When N1MM Logger+ sends a corrected QSO, I update the original.
• Your portable call counts as a different station. W9XYZ/P working K9XYZ isn't a duplicate of W9XYZ working K9XYZ.
• A validated POTA contact at a park is a different contact from the same station at home, and from the same station at a different park.

🏕️ POTA & SOTA

Any comment containing POTA or SOTA gets the +2 (on a verified QSO). For POTA I also try to work out which park it was, so activators who move parks don't cause duplicates.

• Easy: just put POTA in the comment. I look up the activator's (or your own) most recent POTA spot within 4 hours of the QSO and tag the park.
• Explicit: put the park in the comment, like POTA US-1012. It's accepted when either station was spotted at that park, or logged a QSO from it, within 4 hours.
• If no park can be confirmed, you still get the +2, and normal duplicate rules apply.

🕛 Days and weeks

• A game day is a UTC day, 00:00 to 23:59 UTC.
• Live QSOs from your logger score on the day they're made. A QSO that arrives late the same day still counts, and steals go by the time of the QSO.
• QSOs timed more than 5 minutes in the future are rejected. Keep your PC clock accurate.
• A game week runs Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 UTC.

🏅 Divisions

There are four divisions: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Elite. Everyone starts in Bronze. Your weekly points rank you against the others in your division. Watch it live on the Divisions page.

Every Sunday at 23:59 UTC:

• The top 25% of each division move up one division (Elite can't go higher).
• The bottom 25% move down one division (Bronze can't go lower).
• In Silver, Gold and Elite, every player with a 0-point week moves down, even if that's more than 25%.
• 25% is rounded down, with a minimum of 1 player. A division needs at least 2 players for anyone to move down.
• Bronze only counts players who scored that week, so you're competing with active players, not the whole roster.
• Then weekly points reset to zero.

Your rating doesn't decide your division. Divisions only follow your weekly points.

⭐ Rating and ranks

Your rating (ELO) is a long-term score. New players start at 500. It updates every day at 00:00 UTC, based on the day before, by comparing your points with the average of the players in your division who scored that day.

• Above 2×, you gain +1 for every 20% above the average.
• At 1500 and up, gains above +5 are cut by 15%. At 2000 and up, by 30%.
• A day you play never lowers your rating, even if you finish at 0 or below (everything stolen, or duplicate penalties). Only time away costs rating (see inactivity below).
• If nobody else in your division scored that day, you get +5.
• Rating stays between 0 and 5000.

Ranks

Inactivity (AWOL)

Each Sunday at 23:59 UTC, if your last QSO was a week or more ago, you lose 3 rating points for every full week you've been away. It grows the longer you're gone: −3 after one week, −6 the next Sunday, −9 the Sunday after (−18 in total after three weeks). One QSO stops it.

🏆 Seasons

A season is one calendar month, from the 1st to the last day. Season standings are your total points for the month. When the month ends, the top 10 get season badges: champion for 1st, silver for 2nd, bronze for 3rd and top 10 for 4th to 10th. See the Season board and past seasons on the History page.

📊 Leaderboards

Awards and badges are listed on the Awards page.

🛡️ Fair play

• A human makes every QSO. Keyers, macros and decoders are fine, but no robots or scripts that work stations without you.
• One transmitter at a time. Running several radios into the game isn't allowed.
• Real QSOs only. Every QSO is checked against the Reverse Beacon Network and, when both stations play, against each other's logs. Accounts with lots of QSOs that never verify get reviewed.
• Real callsigns only. Callsigns are checked for format and against QRZ.com.
• CW only. Other modes sent to the game are ignored.

Rate limits

These are set by what one CW station can do, even running flat out in a contest. They apply per internet connection. QSOs over the limit are rejected.

There's no daily limit. Operate as long as you like.

🏷️ Nicknames

Want a display name next to your callsign? Put /name YourNickname in your logger's comment field on any QSO, for example /name Sparky.

• 3 to 8 characters.
• I approve each one before it shows.
• You can change it once every 30 days.