Dave, In the immortal words repeated from Luke Skywalker - everything you just
said in this post was wrong.
Actually, very few of the top contesters operate single op seriously in IARU.
The HQ stations are very active but many, not all, top contesters seem to take
the summer off and do not go all in. I know, I like this contest and do it
regularly.
There is a substantial jump in activity however the jump is in working WRTC
stations, not in overall activity. The worst contest I ever had in this was in
the 2014 WRTC year. By far. I was at the WRTC 2018 competition so I can't
comment whether the effect was repeated.
For the above reason, new records are usually not achievable during WRTC years
for the normal participants. It may help the HQ stations but for normal
stations in the popular contesting countries, there is a negative affect.
While its true there is no self spotting by WRTC contesters, its worse than
that. They don't need to even take the time to spot. They have been told if
they sit on any frequency and make 3 ques the WRTC robot will spot them.
Programmatically. This is even one better than asking all of your friends to
spot you.
The rest of the IARU contestants do not benefit from the spots made
automatically. WRTC stations are not mults, they are all just Italian stations
worth 5 points. Just like any other European station that isn't so spotted.
Dave, K3ZJ said:
"Seriously, don't you are being punked?
Every IARU participant this year will have a much better chance to win in
almost any category because a lot of the very top competitors will be in the
WRTC from Italy instead of the IARU contest from USA (or wherever).
And almost certainly there will be a substantial jump in activity, so this is
the best year to try to set a new record BECAUSE it?s a WRTC year. The last
time WRTC ran, back in 2018, the number of submitted logs shot up by
23 percent.
So with many top competitors absent, and a big jump in competitors expected,
new faces are to be expected among the top scorers and new records will be
reachable if propagation is favorable.
Spotting? There is NO self-spotting by the WRTC stations. They will be
spotted or not by third parties with no control or influence from the
competitors themselves. In fact, the competitors have no say in any of the
spotting decisions. And during the event itself the competitors don?t even
have a cell phone, let alone an Internet connection capable of sending or
receiving spots or any other similar information.
But, those spots will materially aid every IARU competitor trying to win their
category or set a new record."
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