CW Trainer Pro — CW Contest Simulator

🇬🇧 English · 🇪🇸 Castellano

Practise CW contesting and everyday HF operating without a radio, an antenna or a band. CW Trainer Pro is a desktop simulator by EA1NK that puts you in the chair of a contest station: a waterfall full of stations, pile-ups that call you, real contest exchanges, propagation that follows the sun, and a logger that behaves like the ones you use on the air.

Download

Get the installer for your system from the Releases page:

System	File
macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel)	.dmg
Windows 10 / 11	.msi or .exe
Linux	.AppImage, .deb or .rpm

The installers are not code-signed yet:

• macOS — Apple has not notarized the app, so the first launch is blocked. Copy it to Applications, then either:
  • open System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway (macOS 15), or right-click the app → Open (macOS 13–14); or
  • run this once in Terminal, which removes the download quarantine (the most reliable option, and the one to use if macOS says the app is "damaged"):

    xattr -cr "/Applications/CW Trainer Pro.app"
    

    (Up to version 0.1.5 the app was called CW PRO and installed as CW Contest Simulator.app.)
• Windows — SmartScreen may warn you: choose More info → Run anyway.

You need macOS 13 or later, Windows with WebView2 (included in Windows 11), or a Linux desktop with WebKitGTK. No internet connection is needed to use it; it is only used for live DX spots, real space weather and data updates.

What you can do

Work contests

Seven operating modes, each with its own exchange, scoring and multipliers:

Mode	What it is
CQ WW	5NN + CQ zone, zones and countries as multipliers
CQ WPX	5NN + serial number, prefixes as multipliers
ARRL DX CW	DX stations send power; W/VE send state or province
CNCW	5NN + province, with the HQ station
IOTA Contest	Serial number + IOTA reference; with the full list of ~1,180 island groups once you download it (see below)
DXpedition	You are the rare DX: handle a pile-up that gets impatient
Live Radio	General operating with real DX spots, one multiplier per country and band

Plus a callsign pile-up trainer for copying several stations calling at once.

Run and search & pounce

• RUN: call CQ with F1 and answer the callers one by one. A pile-up builds up, gets impatient, asks "?" or "AGN?" and leaves if you take too long.
• S&P: click a station on the waterfall, the bandmap or a spot, and call it.
• Human QRM (someone tuning up on your frequency, "QRL?"), operators who call over you, and stations that only answer when you send your callsign keep you on your toes.

Operate like in your favourite logger

• N1MM Logger+ and Win-Test key bindings, ESM (Enter sends what fits the field), macros F1–F8 you can edit.
• Split, XIT, RIT, UP 1, A⇄B and two VFOs per radio, and full SO2R operation with two radios (see below).
• A skimmer that decodes callsigns and paints the stations calling CQ on the bandmap; switch it off to copy by ear.

SO2R: two radios, two ears

Run two radios at once like a real multi-band contest station (Single Operator, Two Radios):

• Each radio has its own band, VFO, filter and split, and its own bandmap. Radio 1 plays in your left ear, radio 2 in your right (use headphones).
• Switch radios with the R1 / R2 strip, the Pause key (N1MM style) or Alt-1 / Alt-2 (Win-Test style). You transmit on the radio that has the focus while the other one keeps listening, so you can search on one while you run on the other.
• The log, the dupes and the multipliers are shared between both radios.

Hear it as it sounds

• A waterfall and S-meter, bandwidth filters from 2000 down to 150 Hz, and a band map.
• 3D audio: each station is placed in space by its frequency (use headphones).
• Real HF flavour: chirp, aurora flutter and selective fading (multipath), plus difficulty levels from Easy to Insane.

Real propagation

• The bands follow the real UTC time and your locator: skip zones, D-layer absorption by day, 160 m and 80 m opening at night, grey line on the map.
• Choose a solar mode (poor, normal, excellent, geomagnetic storm) or use live NOAA space weather (SFI, A and K indices and storm alerts).
• Real CW spots from the Reverse Beacon Network over Telnet, out of the box. Add more cluster nodes and connect to several at once (desktop version).

Check partial and multipliers, like the real thing

• Check partial in its own floating window — drag it to a second screen. It uses the real MASTER.SCP database: type part of a callsign and see the matches, the ones one letter away, and your dupes struck through. Click one to put it in the log.
• Multipliers and QSOs per band window: QSOs, points and multipliers for each band, the zones, countries, sections or provinces you have worked, and the ones you still need.

Check partial	Multipliers and QSOs per band

Keep your log

• Every contact is saved. Export to ADIF and Cabrillo 3.0, and import ADIF.
• Practice sessions with a goal, accuracy, errors, QSOs per hour and a list of what to review; download the log as CSV.

Up to date data

• cty.dat (country files) and MASTER.SCP are built in, and you can update them from Preferences with one click, just like "Update country files" in N1MM.
• The full IOTA list is not bundled with the app (it is © RSGB and IOTA Ltd). One click in Preferences › Network › Data files downloads it from iota-world.org for your own personal, non-commercial use. Until then, the IOTA Contest runs with a reduced list of islands.

Your key, your paddles

• Use a K1EL WinKeyer: its paddles and speed knob drive the simulator.
• Or a USB-MIDI key (Arduino, Teensy…) with a built-in iambic keyer (modes A and B) or a straight key.

English or Castellano

Switch the interface between English and Spanish at any moment with the EN / ES button. There is a built-in quick manual with the essentials and a key table.

Preferences	Manual

Getting started in one minute

1. Open the app and press Start on the radio window.
2. In Preferences › Station enter your callsign and locator.
3. Pick a contest, press F1 to call CQ, type what you hear and press Enter.

License

Freeware: free to download, use and share. The source code is not published. See LICENSE.md, and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for the open-source components and data it includes.

Disclaimer

This software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Use it at your own risk: in no event shall the author be liable for any claim, damage or other liability arising from the use of, or inability to use, the software.

It is a training simulator: stations, propagation and scores are simulated and do not replace the official rules of any contest. If you connect a WinKeyer or any other keyer to a real transmitter, you are solely responsible for what is transmitted and for complying with your licence conditions.

73 and good contesting! — EA1NK

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Questions or ideas? Open an issue.