WRTC

[cmschonewaldcox at ucdavis.edu]

An open letter about the WRTC:

Since the WRTC organizing committe has said that nothing is "set in
concrete" I would like to offer my opinion as a judge at the first
WRTC held in Seattle.
I find several problems. 
>>   The Administration expects that the WRTC QTH stations will
have similar equipment and antennas.>>
1. It seems as if nothing was learned from the first event. I
traveled around to many stations in Seattle and saw that NONE were
at ALL equal. Not only were they not equal in hardware (antennas)
they were not AT ALL equal in QTH. One of the JA teams for example
was in a valley surrounded by mountains!  There is no way to make
distant stations equal.

2. The method of selection of who goes is wrong. According to the
organizers " Competitors: The competitors shall be two-person
teams. Both members of a team shall reside in the same IARU zone."
This is truely an AMERICAN point of view. There are 6 ITU zones in
the USA: all from affulent areas. While in Europe there are 9 zones
but only 5 are from affluent europe i.e. G, F, PA, I S5, TF, SM, EA
etc while the rest are from UA/UB etc. Since the competitors have
to pay their own way it will not be the best ops that go but the
most politically coonected. The organizers failed to realize that
national pride is an important factor. Maybe they tried to
eliminate the country aspect by using ITU zones but only the rich
can go from countries other than US/JA/14-15 Europe. 
In addition, JA, the most populous ham country in the world is
alone in zone 45 with JD1! That means that only one JA team can go
+ backup. The same as TF!! This is beyond crazy. 

3. There is no tape recording provision. This was one of the major
features of the 1st WRTC judging. The tape recording proved very
useful when the USSR team challenged the US #1 team. The tapes
proved that all was OK and that alleviated any bad feelings.

4. The use of packet is not right. Why should the best operators be
judged on what others find for them? Besides the use of packet was
a problem in the first WRTC. Friends can help friends with QSO's.
If K3EST is competing against UA9BA (Just an example Willy), and
his friends want to help K3EST they can by posting a packet message
of my freq. This is wrong. The packet systems should provide
printouts of the activity during the contest to prevent such
"hidden action".

5. Removing all unique QSO's is beyond stupid. This sounds like the
CQ MIR of years past that removed all multipliers from your log
that did submit a log. I once lost 23 mults. Why should I try to
find 7Q7XX if the QSO is going to be removed. The data base the
WRTC will generate will be too small to make rational judgements of
what is a BAD unique. This I assume is input from the sprint, a
limited participation contest. The WRTC teams can work everyone
anywhere, so if the JA team gets on and wrks 1000 JA's in japanese
they may all be unique! So the score would be zero!

>>The log submission deadline is one hour after the end of the IARU
contest period.  All teams shall submit their log on a diskette to
a referee prior to the log submission deadline. >>

6. This time limit is too short. All teams will not respond the
same at the end of the test. Some teams will get around to checking
15 or 30 into the checking time for various reasons. They are not
robots. So each will not checked equally. 

How can the WRTC be fair?
1. Forget about the previous WRTC. It was not fair. I suggest to
you that the winning teams are selected by a combination of 3
events.
   A. The on the air contest during the IARU test. CW QSO's count
3 times as much as SSB QSO's. This helps to eliminate the advantage
the English speakers might have. The stations CAN NOT BE MADE
EQUAL.
 
  B. A PED test(CW, SSB or Both) of some sort. The teams operate
JE3MAS's PED pileup simulator for 2 hours. The score is calculated
by CT. In this case ALL contestants are exactly equal.

  C. A CW speed copying test. This may require that a member of the
team is a cw CHAMPION or a Fox hunt.

Each event carries the weight of some amount of points(say 10 for
the top score). The overall winner is the combination of the three.

Let's try to make this one right.
There is still plenty of time to iron out the wrinkles.

73 Bob K3EST