ContestProp — complete user guide

ContestProp is an HF operating decision aid for 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres. It combines a station-specific propagation model with recent WSPR evidence, current solar/geomagnetic conditions and, on the live tools, RBN CW confirmation.

Which page should I use? FORECAST answers “what should propagation look like?”, STRATEGY answers “how should I operate a contest?”, TARGET answers “when should I try this part of the world?”, BAND WATCH answers “which band is moving now?”, LIVE shows the current evidence picture, and HISTORY shows what actually happened and how stored forecasts are performing against later evidence.

Forecast

Enter a 4-, 6- or 8-character Maidenhead locator, UTC start/end, mode and power, then generate the forecast. Forecast periods can be up to 48 hours. The result ranks all six contest bands hour by hour and scores each propagation region.

Band plan: The recommended band is selected from the strongest useful set of regional paths, rather than one exceptional path.
World map: Select a band to view its regional probabilities, or BEST to show the model’s preferred band in each region. The map is a contest-usefulness display, not a measured MUF map.
Per-band antennas: Choose Low dipole, Dipole / EDZ, Vertical or Beam independently for each band. These choices alter forecast assumptions and are included in PDF generation.
Percentages: A percentage estimates productive contest conditions for that band, region and hour under the selected station assumptions. It is not a guaranteed QSO probability.

Strategy — contest operating plan

Strategy converts the forecast into an operator timetable. Select an upcoming HF event from the Contest Calendar list or enter dates manually. The calendar shows all upcoming HF events by default; SHOW MAJOR ONLY reduces the list. Contests longer than 48 hours are clipped to the first 48 hours because that is the forecast horizon.

Best window / band: The strongest planned operating period and its preferred band.
Recommended operating blocks: Practical blocks showing UTC period, band, target region, true bearing, distance, average/peak chance and backup band.
Hour by hour: A shack-friendly timetable of band changes, beam direction, target, probability, backup band and grey-line indication.
High-rate / lower-rate windows: Periods to protect for operating and quieter periods that may suit breaks or maintenance.
Station setup: Choose Single station or Multi-Two. Multi-Two runs two stations simultaneously on two different bands and independently selects the strongest available band/target combination for each station every hour.
Station setup: Choose Single station or Multi-Two. Multi-Two runs two stations simultaneously on two different bands and independently selects the strongest available band and target combination for each station every hour.
Per-band antennas: Strategy uses the antenna selected for each band when building the plan.

Target Planner

Target Planner reverses the normal forecast question. Choose the part of the world you want to work and ContestProp tells you when and where to try.

Target: Select a propagation region, enter an exact remote Maidenhead locator, or enter a common DX prefix. Locator targets give the most precise bearing and distance.
24 / 48 hours: Choose how far ahead to search. Every hour is evaluated on all six HF bands.
Best opportunity: Shows the highest-scoring band and UTC hour for the selected target.
Opening windows: Groups the strongest consecutive hours into practical start, peak and end operating windows.
Band timeline: For each UTC hour, shows the preferred band, forecast chance, independently modelled SP/LP route choice and score, backup band, confidence and grey-line indication.
LIVE evidence: Shows whether current WSPR/RBN evidence is already present for the target propagation region.
Short path: Initial great-circle short-path bearing from your station to the target, in degrees true. ContestProp samples illumination and geomagnetic exposure along the complete short-path arc.
Long path: The reciprocal great-circle route is modelled separately along the major arc. ContestProp compares route illumination, twilight, distance, F10.7 and Kp and can recommend LP when its route score clearly exceeds SP.
Distance: Approximate great-circle distance to the centre of the selected propagation region.

Target Planner accepts broad propagation regions, exact remote Maidenhead locators and common DX prefixes. Maidenhead targets use exact target geometry while historical evidence remains tied to the enclosing propagation region. Prefix targets are approximate unless exact coordinates are known. SP/LP route scores are propagation-suitability indices rather than measured signal strength or guaranteed QSO probabilities. LIVE WSPR/RBN evidence confirms the target region but does not identify which route produced the signal.

Band Watch

Band Watch is the quickest “what is happening now?” screen. It uses current LIVE evidence and refreshes automatically every 60 seconds.

Rank: Orders the six contest bands using current evidence.
Movement: OPENING, STABLE, CLOSING and faster variants compare recent activity with the preceding period.
Best target now: The strongest currently observed regional path for that band.
Beam: Initial true bearing and compass direction toward the best target region.
Strength: A 0–100 evidence index, not a percentage chance of a QSO.
Confidence / evidence: Shows how strongly the result is supported and whether WSPR, RBN or both contribute.
Unexpected opening: Highlights a live path substantially outperforming its recent historical baseline.

LIVE — current propagation evidence

LIVE is the visual current-conditions dashboard. It refreshes its data every 60 seconds and is designed to remain open on a shack display, tablet or phone.

LIVE BANDS: Six band cards summarise current evidence, strongest path, score, confidence and movement.
WORLD PROPAGATION NOW: The map shows the strongest observed band/evidence across broad propagation regions. Boundaries and shading are decision aids, not precise coverage contours.
BEST OPENINGS NOW: Ranks the strongest current band/region paths.
DATA: WSPR, RBN and NOAA indicators show source state/freshness.
SPACE: Shows current Kp, Bz, solar-wind speed, Dst, R/S/G scales and F10.7 when available.

LIVE indices are current evidence scores. They are deliberately different from Forecast percentages. Sparse reporting can produce a low LIVE score even when a path is physically possible.

History & model verification

History compares forecasts that existed before an event with the WSPR evidence that arrived afterwards. It is intended to show where ContestProp is accurate, optimistic or conservative rather than merely displaying historical activity.

Rolling accuracy: 14-, 30-, 60- and 90-day windows show matched cells, mean absolute error, bias, correlation and the percentage of predictions within ±10 model points.
By band: Shows forecast and observed averages plus error metrics independently for 160, 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres.
Calibration: Groups predictions into 10-point buckets so you can see whether a forecast such as 70 is actually followed by observed evidence around 70.
Over-predictions: Highlights band/hour/region cells where the model was too optimistic.
Under-predictions: Highlights unexpectedly strong propagation that the model rated too low.
By region: Shows model error by propagation region, making systematic geographic weaknesses visible.
WSPR verification: Station-specific verification uses the entered four-character Maidenhead square and requires an exact band, UTC hour and propagation-region match.
RBN corroboration: RBN CW data is persisted from the live telnet feed as compact hourly region-to-region aggregates and shown separately as broad regional evidence. It is not treated as station-specific verification because its endpoints are not equivalent to the entered Maidenhead square.

The History page also shows the forecast/WSPR pipeline timestamps so a zero-match warm-up state explains whether forecasts are still maturing or matching WSPR evidence is missing. If several stored forecasts cover the same band/hour/region cell, ContestProp uses the latest forecast that was generated before the event. This avoids double-counting and prevents later forecasts from benefiting from hindsight. SP/LP validation remains separate because current WSPR/RBN evidence does not reliably identify which great-circle route produced a signal.

Locator and station assumptions

Every station-specific calculation begins at the entered Maidenhead locator. A 6- or 8-character locator gives a more exact station position; historical WSPR evidence is associated with the enclosing four-character XX## square. ContestProp does not silently borrow another station square’s local history.

The browser can remember the last valid locator on supported pages. Preferences are local to that browser/device. A valid locator supplied explicitly in a page link can take priority over the stored value.

Grey-line DX

Forecast and Strategy examine station/target solar illumination in 15-minute steps for useful low-band geometry. Grey-line windows favour 40, 80 and 160 metres and consider twilight at either end, darkness at the other end, path distance, solar flux and Kp.

Displayed bearings are true bearings. Grey-line strength is an opportunity score, not a guaranteed contact probability.

Space weather

F10.7: Solar radio flux used as ionisation context.
Kp: Planetary geomagnetic activity; elevated values can degrade HF paths, particularly at higher latitudes.
Bz / solar wind / Dst: Additional current geomagnetic context used by the enhanced space-weather layer where available.
R / S / G: NOAA radio-blackout, solar-radiation and geomagnetic-storm scales.

Always consider the source age. A displayed value is not necessarily a newly measured value merely because the page has refreshed.

Data sources, freshness and confidence

WSPR supplies station-locator-specific propagation evidence and the rolling historical baseline. RBN supplies current regional CW confirmation in LIVE tools. NOAA SWPC supplies solar and geomagnetic context.

The detailed historical window is approximately 30 days, with recent observations weighted strongly and a smaller weighting around the 26–28 day solar-rotation recurrence. Confidence rises as useful evidence accumulates for the selected station square, band, hour and region.

WSPR and RBN are propagation sensors. Reception reports are not proof that an SSB contact is possible at the displayed time or signal level.

Colour / Unassisted PDF

The PDF export freezes a Forecast into a static pre-contest document, including the station assumptions and per-band antenna profile. The PDF engine remains available even though COLOUR PDF is no longer a primary top-navigation button.

Troubleshooting

The site still shows an older version: The deployment may still be in progress or may have failed its pre-deployment tests. Reload and check the version badge. Production remains on the previous working version when deployment validation fails.
LIVE shows dashes: Check the DATA indicators first. WSPR/RBN may be warming up, delayed or have little evidence for the selected station. NOAA availability is independent of radio evidence.
LIVE reports “update failed”: Reload once to ensure the current JavaScript is loaded. If the error remains, report the exact yellow error text and displayed version.
The map is blank but other data works: The map also needs its external map assets. Network/content blocking can affect the map without affecting ContestProp’s API data.
Strategy contest list is short: Check whether SHOW MAJOR ONLY is active. SHOW ALL CONTESTS displays the full upcoming HF list returned by the calendar feed.
Forecast and LIVE disagree: They measure different things: Forecast is a forward model informed by history; LIVE is current observed evidence. They are not expected to produce identical numbers.

What the numbers mean — and do not mean

ContestProp is a band-selection, timing and antenna-direction aid. Forecast percentages estimate useful conditions; LIVE/Band Watch scores are evidence indices; grey-line scores rank opportunities. None is a guarantee of a QSO, signal report or exact MUF.

Propagation regions are intentionally broad. Bearings and distances to a region use its propagation centroid, so they should not be treated as an exact bearing to every station inside that region.

Support ContestProp

ContestProp and TropoScout share independent server infrastructure. The DONATION button opens the Ko-fi support page.