We’ve noticed some weird numbers the rate monitor was showing up during the last ARRL SS CW contest :
Highest rate : 862 q/h by N9TK. How could that be?! Our explanation is the following:
“The best rate monitor” script runs hourly to calculate every one’s hourly rate consistently. It sorts out all the best rates and find out the biggest value to put on the board header.
Everything is correct If a person has connected to the server before having a fist QSO in a log. But when a person gets connected to the server few hours after a contest start having already few hundreds qso’s in a log fools the script.
Take a look at the N9TK QSO’s rate graph:
N9TK has connected to the server on 24th hour after ARRL SS CW has started and his first post had over 800 qso’s. Our script calculates an instant rate by subtracting the last hour QSO’s number from the previous one. Since we have nothing for the previous hour we consider that as 0 QSO’s. So we’ve got 862 QSO’s have been made from 23th to 24th hour. Voila! ))
Sure we’ll find out a way to check up the posting history to prevent such “funny” numbers in a future. I just hope that wouldn’t make this script stress out the server too high since it usually calculates a rate from few dozens thousand numbers.