Pileup trainer

How to play

1. Choose how many stations call at once (2 to 5), the speed (Slow, Normal or Fast) and the round length (60 seconds, 2 minutes or 5 minutes).
2. Press Start the pileup. The callers come in one by one over the first second or two, then keep calling with short pauses.
3. Pick one voice, copy its full callsign and type it in the Callsign box. Press Enter or Log it.
4. If someone is calling that callsign, it goes in your log and a new station joins the pile. If not, it counts as a busted call.
5. Keep going until the clock runs out, or press End now (a round ended early keeps no best). Read your score, then press Go again. Switch tabs and the round pauses until you resume.

What the trainer does

It plays a small contest pileup in your browser: several stations sending their callsigns over each other, the way a rare station or a busy contest station hears them.

• A voice for every caller. Each station gets its own pitch between 450 and 850 Hz, its own speed and its own signal strength.
• A pile that never empties. Work a station and it drops out; a new caller joins after a short pause, so the number calling stays the same.
• A live log. Every callsign you work appears in a numbered log under the box.
• Clear feedback. A wrong entry tells you whether no one is calling it or it is already in the log.
• A score that means something. The end screen shows your contacts, your rate an hour, your busted calls and who was still calling.
• Your best for each setting. The best number of contacts is kept on this device for every mix of callers, speed and round length.
• A daily challenge. On days when Pileup is the featured game, the daily challenge from the games page gives everyone the same callers, with 3 stations calling at normal speed for 2 minutes.

How it works

Each station is a separate tone on the same audio output, so the calls overlap just as they do on the air. A station sends its callsign, waits between 0.6 and 2.8 seconds, then calls again. Because the pauses are random, the calls drift in and out of step with each other.

Pitches are kept at least 60 Hz apart whenever there is room. That gap is what lets you follow one tone through the others, the same skill a CW operator uses with a narrow filter. Volumes vary too: some callers are loud and easy, others sit under the pile.

Speeds follow the PARIS standard, where one unit lasts 1,200 ms divided by the WPM. A dot is one unit and a dash three, with one unit inside a letter, three between letters and seven between words. Each caller picks a speed in a band 8 WPM wide, and the band starts 1 WPM higher for each station in the pile.

Your rate is the number of contacts scaled to an hour: contacts divided by the round's seconds, times 3,600. Contest operators judge a run the same way.

Examples

The speed band for each setting and number of callers:

Callsigns of the kind the game sends, and how long one call lasts at 11, 19 and 27 WPM:

Short calls like W5E come and go in a second or two, so they are easy to miss under longer ones. Numbers are long in Morse (five marks each), which is why the digit is often the hardest part to catch.

Tips for working the pile

Start with two callers on Slow and a 2-minute round. Move up one step at a time: a third caller first, then Normal speed.

Don't type as you hear. Copy the whole call in your head, then enter it, because a partial call is a bust. If you lose a station halfway, wait for it to call again.

Go for the easy one first. A loud, slow caller is a quick contact, and each one you work makes room for the next. If digits trip you up, drill them in the callsign sprint before coming back.