WinQuake Documentation

Updated: 3/12/2018

Download WinQuake: Version 3.4.2: 32-Bit / 64-Bit

Running WinQuake under Linux using Wine

Running WinSDR and WinQuake on a Raspberry Pi Board

New Network Event Report Files

Please read this if you are having problems registering WinQuake 


Contents:


Introduction:

WinQuake was written to view and analyze Public Seismic Network (PSN), Princeton Earth Physics Project (PEPP), SAC Binary, GSE2.0, Lamont AH (XDR), MINISeed and Standard for the Exchange of Earthquake Data (SEED) volumes available on the Internet.

New Features:

Version 3.4.0 to 3.4.2

Version 3.3.8 and 3.3.9

Version 3.3.7

Beta version 3.3.5 and 3.3.6:

Beta version 3.3.4:

Version 3.3.x:

Features:

System Requirements:


Installation:

After downloading the self-extracting WinQuake setup program, execute the program using Windows Explorer. You can also execute the setup program by opening a DOS box and typing the name of the WinQuake setup program.

During the installation, enter the requested information in the dialog boxes. When you want to go to the next dialog box click the Next button. When all of the information is entered, the setup program will install the program in the directory you selected.


Using WinQuake:

The Open File dialog box is used to open event files. After opening an event file you can zoom into a section of the seismogram by using the mouse or the X-Scale dialog box. To use the mouse, do the following:

To zoom out, select the Reset item under the View menu, press the RST toolbar icon, or use the X-Scale dialog box.

WinQuake calculates distances between the event and the recording station by the user moving the P and S markers to the beginning of the P and S waves on the seismogram. You must first enable distance and magnitude calculation by selecting the Distance/Magnitude item under the Calculate menu. See How WinQuake Calculates Distance for more information. If the magnitude correction factor is known for the sensor, WinQuake will display the magnitude of the event. See How WinQuake Calculates Magnitude for more information.

After picking the P and S waves, other phases like PP, PcP, SS, SSS etc, can be viewed by selecting the Phases item under the View menu, or using the phase display toolbar icon. The Phase Control dialog box is used to add or remove phases that will be displayed when this feature is enabled. With the Event Location Map Window (see below), and three or more P and S picks from different stations, the user can locate an event. 

The program can locate the P and S markers if the event location and time of origin are known. If these fields are filled in, using the Event Report processing or the Event Information dialog box, the program will use the currently selected travel-time tables and depth to calculate the location of the P and S markers. Too activate this feature, use the P-S Location menu item under the Calculate menu or the LOC icon on the toolbar.

Location Map Window:

WinQuake can be used to locate an event using the Location Map Window. A typical Location Map Window looks like this. After opening one or more event files and picking the P and S phase, a map can be drawn showing the stations with a distance circle. This can be used, if you have good P and S picks, to locate the event. Where the circles overlap, or come near each other, is where the event occurred.

To open a Location Map window, click on the map tool bar icon next to the RST (Reset) icon or use the "View/Locate Event" menu item. After opening a map window, you use the Zoom menu to zoom in and out. To move the globe around, double click on a point on the globe. This will move the map so that this point is now centered in the window.

Stations are marked with a triangle and a small square marks the location of the event, if the event location is known. A small + marks the center point of the graph. On the left side of the window, the cursor's location is displayed as well as the azimuth and distance from the center point. Under the Cursor location is the Station color codes. The station markers and distance circles are drawn with these colors. Under the Station information is the event information, if the event information is known.

After locating an event using three or more event windows, an event report can be created using the mouse. To do this, move the mouse to event location and right click. This will open a floating menu bar. Select the Make Event Report menu item. WinQuake will now make an event report based on the P and S picks in the event window. The time of origin and the magnitude are calculated by averaging the data in each event window. The depth comes from the current selected P and S travel-time table depth selected in the Travel-Time Tables dialog box. The event location will be based on the location of the mouse at the time the report is created. After calculating the information, WinQuake will open the Update Event Report dialog box. This dialog box will display the report information and if the user press the Update all Event Windows button, all of the event windows will be updated with the new report information.

When using this Window, make sure you are viewing event files for only one event. If you have event file windows open for more then one event you will have problems location the event.

FFT/DFT Window and Frequency Domain Dataset Filtering:

To display a frequency spectrum of an event file, use the Full FFT, Full DFT, or the View FFT, View DFT  items under the Calculate menu, or use one of the four FFT/DFT toolbar icons. This will open another window displaying a frequency spectrum of the complete dataset, if you use the Full FFT/DFT menu or icon, or do a FFT/DFT only on the dataset being viewed, if the View FFT/DFT menu or icon is used. A typical FFT/DFT Window looks like this.

The differences between doing a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and a DFT (Discreet Fourier Transform) are as follows; The DFT does a more accurate job at converting the time domain datasets to the frequency domain. It also has the advantage of being able to do the conversion on an arbitrary number of samples. The problem with doing DFTs is the amount of time needed to do the conversion. Doing a DFT on a large dataset can take a long time. The advantage of doing a FFT on the dataset is speed. FFTs take much less time to do the conversion to the frequency domain then DFTs. The disadvantage of  FFTs is you need to do the FFT on datasets that are a power of 2 ( 256, 512, 1024 etc) samples long. If the dataset you are converting is not a power of 2 samples WinQuake needs to either pad the buffer with zeros or truncate the samples to a power of 2 in length. You have the option to have WinQuake truncate or pad the data by using the Calculate / DFT/FFT / FFT Pad Data menu items when a Event Window is selected.   

The amplitude data of the FFT/DFT can be displayed either logarithmically or linearly by using the Log-Y item under the Option menu. The Options menu can also be used to control the displaying of the X or Y grids, and turn the Window's title bar on or off.

After you create a FFT or DFT graph window you can apply digital filters to the dataset. Note: The IIR Filter (see below) produces a more accurate filter then using the FFT/DFT method. Instead of using the FFT/DFT window to filter the time domain dataset, the user should use IIR filtering.  

Since filters are applied to the complete dataset, filtering can only be done when the Full FFT or Full DFT menu or icon are used. When the View FFT or View DFT menu or icon are used, the filter icons and menu items under the Calculate menu will be disabled.

The following filters can be applied to the dataset:

After applying one or more filters to the dataset, you can convert the FFT/DFT information back to the time domain (normal event graph) by selecting the Time Domain item under the Calculate menu, or by using the Time Domain icon in the toolbar. When WinQuake finishes performing the reverse FFT or DFT, the event data window used to create the FFT or DFT Window will be updated with the newly filter dataset.

When the FFT View or DFT View feature is used, and the Auto FFT/DFT Display item is checked in the Event Window's Calculate menu, you can view a new FFT of the viewed dataset as you scroll through the data using the vertical scrollbar.

The user can zoom in and display one decade at a time by using the magnifying glass toolbar icon or using the mouse and clicking in area you want to zoom into.

Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) Filtering:

This method of filtering is done directly to the dataset and produces a more accurate filter then the FFT dataset filtering (see above). Unlike the FFT dataset filtering, there is no need to do an FFT before and after filtering the data. The process of doing the FFT causes small inaccuracies when the frequency spectrum data is converted back to the time domain. 

To apply an IIR lowpass or highpass filter to the dataset, open the Time Domain Filtering dialog box using the Calculate / Time Domain Filter menu items or press the "F" toolbar icon. After selecting the filter type, cutoff frequency and number of poles, press the Apply Now button. The Undo Filter button can be used to undo the previous filter applied to the dataset. See the Time Domain Filtering dialog box for more information.

Sensor Period-Extending Filtering:

This filter can be used to extend the natural period of a sensor. It is based on the inverse filter design by Bob McClure. See Inverse Filter for Seismic Sensors for more information. The Time Domain Filtering dialog box is used to apply this filter to the dataset.

GoogleEarth Feature:

WinQuake Version 3.1.2 and above supports displaying the event and/or station location in Google Earth. For this feature to work you must install Google Earth and have a Internet connection so Google can access the online map database. The Google Earth feature is located in various menu and dialog boxes within WinQuake. They are:


Updated Network Event Report Files:

06/04/15 - Recently the USGS has changed the file location and format of their Geojson based event reports. This zip file ( GetReport0615.zip ) contains updated getreport.exe and network.dat files. These files should be copied to your WinQuake directory. After restarting the program the 1-Day, 7-Day and 30-Day links in the Network Event Report dialog box should be working again.


Registering WinQuake:

Please do the following if you are having problems registering the program.  Using either the desktop WinQuake Icon or the Start Menu item, right click on the Icon or menu item and select "Run as administrator". You should then be able to register the program without any error messages. If the problem continues try the following:

  1. Uninstall WinQuake
  2. Install WQ Version 3.5.0 using one of these links: 32-Bit / 64-Bit
  3. Install the program in c:\winquake
  4. Disable any anti-virus programs until you resolve the problem
  5. Make sure you are running WinQuake as Administrator

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