Manu (LU9ESD / AC1NU) has long perceived radio amateur contests as real races. His passion for Formula 1 and motorsport led him to the idea that even contesting deserves a visual and dynamic presentation - not just a dry list of results published weeks after the race. The result is ContestScope, webová platforma dostupná na contestscope.com, ktorá prenáša koncept pretekárskej telemetrie do sveta KV contestov. Motto projektu to vystihuje presne: „contest telemetry. Live and beyond."
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Cockpit - your racing dashboard
The central element of ContestScope is The Cockpit module. It works as a live control panel focused on your station: it shows running scores, current pace (rate), scoring progression and band-by-band performance comparisons. A key feature is a head-to-head battle with the eight closest competitors – four ahead of you and four behind you in order. All data is updated minute by minute based on publicly reported results. In a contest, an hour is a long time - everything can change in ten minutes, which is why minute granularity is essential.
Live results and club competitions
The Live Scoring module makes available the standings across categories and regions. the operator sees not only his own position, but also the pace, multipliers and band activity of competitors. Comparison of performance is possible between any stations, which makes it possible to analyze the strategy of rivals even during the race. Who has just opened a new band, who has gained a lead in multipliers, who is slowing down - all this is information that is missing in the classic tabular results service.
A separate Live Club Competition section follows the battle between clubs. Interactive graphs show how the club's overall score develops, which stations contribute to it, and what the dynamics of contributions are over time. For competitive teams, it's a way to evaluate in real time whether their strategy is working.
Conditions of dissemination
ContestScope also integrates solar and geomagnetic data into the racing environment. The Propagation & Weather module displays current space weather and local geomagnetic alerts tailored to your station location. Information about an approaching storm or geomagnetic disturbance directly in the racing interface is more practical than switching between separate web pages. In this way, the operator can adjust the strategy in time - for example, move the activity to lower bands before the arrival of the fault.
Log playback and analysis
After the end of the contest comes the Contest Replay module. The entire race weekend can be replayed in a matter of minutes - with the development of positions, scores and graphs of the performance of individual racers. It is not a static recording, but an animated reconstruction of the course of the race.
The Log Analysis module accepts both Cabrillo and ADIF logs and generates detailed statistics: hourly rate, connection distribution by band, traffic patterns, and overall overview. The most interesting part is the animated map of the world, on which all connections are gradually displayed, differentiated by color according to bands - from the first to the last. The entire 48-hour contest will take place in a few minutes in the form of a visual story.
Export and share
ContestScope enables the export of statistics into a text report ready for publication on the 3830 portal or on social networks. From the Log Analysis module, it is also possible to generate animations of maps and the progress of the contest, which can be saved and shared as visual records. Shareable visual content is one of the goals of the project - contests are not televised races, but that doesn't mean they can't be made interesting for viewers.
A project in the growth stage
ContestScope is a personal project that Manu is working on independently. The platform is optimized for desktop browsers and larger screens – the experience is limited on mobile devices. Each panel contains an icon with an explanation of the displayed data. The author actively solicits feedback from the community and notes that some features may still require fine-tuning. This is a newly launched service, so it is reasonable to expect that the interface and availability of features will continue to evolve.
The philosophy behind ContestScope is simple: the contest is not just about the final score. It's a race, and every race has a story. A tool that can visualize this story in real time can bring a new dimension to contesting - not only for active competitors, but also for those who like to watch the progress from the sidelines.