Rate Window

The Rate window, of course, is my favorite. The more, the faster, the better for ham radio contesting. But, the window is a little more fun behind the scenes than would initially appear.

Open the Rate Window

To open the Rates window in WriteLog, go to the main WriteLog toolbar and select 'Windows' and then select 'Rates.'

Rate by QSO setting

This window contains the rate display in its top two lines. The top display is averaged over the most recent 10 QSO's, and the lower one is averaged over the most recent 100. But in both cases, they will look back no more than 2 hours (if you don't have 10 or 100 QSO's in that time) and instead will compute the rate over the past 2 hours.

As you get started, they will both show the same rate because of the limit to how far back they will search, but over a long operating period, they show your short term and long terms QSO rates.

'Right Click' Rate window menu

A right mouse click on the center line in the display brings up a menu selecting whether the rates displayed are for the current band, or for all bands. The band calculation and display is the band of the last QSO entered on this workstation and changes bands with you. This is a great feature if you want to insure you know how your rate is on the band you are operating on at the time to determine if you should stay or change ham radio bands.

Also, on this right click menu is your option to select whether you want the window to calculate on the last 10/100 QSO's or whether you want to calculate based upon last 10 minutes and last hour. I always select the last 10 minutes and last how as it seems to show a better trend of QSO’s for the contest in deciding to stay or move bands.

Time On/Off

The bottom two lines of the Rate window are the time on/off calculation. It is updated each time you log a QSO and also every minute. WriteLog assumes that any gap of 30 minutes or more between QSO's is time off, any smaller gap is time on. It starts the clock with the first QSO in the log. WriteLog doesn’t notice a break until you accumulate 30 minutes without logging a QSO, so during the first 30 minutes of a break, it will add the break as on time, but as soon as the break exceeds 30 minutes it will correctly recalculate the on/off times.