The world is 32,400 squares. You already own some of them. Go and look.
Every point on earth sits in a lettered square about 160 km across, and there are 32,400 of them. Grid Rush does not keep a score of its own: it reads your QSL World logbook and counts what is there. Every logbook you keep is counted together, as one board, and every contact you have ever made already claims a square. Nothing to import, nothing to set up. Your map is probably already interesting.
It works from the copy of your log on your own computer, so the whole board recomputes the instant you change a band or a mode, and it keeps working with the network unplugged.
Every term is something the log can prove, because a score you cannot audit is a score nobody trusts. The Score tab shows every line.
One contact into a square claims it, and it stays claimed. Squares you worked years ago count the day you log them.
A square across town is worth 10. One on the far side of the planet, worked on four bands and two modes, is worth over 130. Every contact you make there pays a point.
A QSL card, an LoTW match or a QRZ confirmation multiplies that square by 1.5. Working a station is a claim; getting confirmed is proof, and proof scores more.
The first two letters are the field; there are 324. Hold three or more squares in one and you take field control, worth a flat +25. Fields are where a grid map turns into territory.
Click any square and it spells out its own sum: 10 base + 24 distance + 15 bands + 6 modes + 8 contacts = 63 × 1.5 confirmed = 95.
| Term | Worth | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| Holding the square | 10 | |
| Distance from your station | +1 per 500 km | +40 |
| Each extra band into it | +5 | +30 |
| Each extra mode | +3 | +15 |
| Each contact after the first | +1 | +25 |
| Any confirmation there | × 1.5 | |
| Field control, three or more squares in a field | +25 per field |
Every unworked square touching one you already hold is drawn as a dashed ghost tile. That is your frontier. Take one and the frontier moves with you. When a contact lands in a new square while the board is open, the map flies there, the points fly into the counter, and the square announces itself in Morse, once, because taking new ground is the rarest thing that happens here.
Twenty-one badges, seven tiers each, from Bronze to Legend. Nothing lights up without the QSOs behind it.
Above the badges sit ten ranks. A genuine rank-up plays a fanfare and announces the new rank in Morse.
The Ladder ranks every operator on QSL World on the grids they hold, whether or not they have ever opened Grid Rush, read straight from the logs and rebuilt nightly: 10 for a worked square, 15 once it is confirmed, 25 for every field held. It shows the top 25, your own position, how many points to pass the operator above you, and the ones within reach this week.
Your global score stays yours: it weights distance from your own station, which no two operators share.
Get Ham Browser and open your board
Zoom from the board into one square and see who is actually down there: the town, the weather on the ground right now, whether they are in daylight, the grey line, every station you worked there placed to the subsquare, the region’s news, and the short and long path from your antenna.
