[CQ-Contest] How to make WRTC more like the Olympics?

[Jim George]

As one who has competed, refereed, and written about three different WRTCs, 
and worked hard to qualify for Moscow in 2010 (and didn't make it), I 
believe that the present system is a good one. It is strenuous, but doable 
if one really wants to hit it hard. People qualified for WRTC in New 
England with their own stations and by traveling to "super stations" as 
guest ops, as well as joining multi-op stations with good locations and 
antennas. That was the case in a number of team leaders in WRTC 2014, and I 
tried to capture that effort with several people as examples. Yes, it's 
expensive and yes, it's time-consuming. There are a few that have great 
stations at home, and/or live in geographically advantaged locations. But 
many if not most of the WRTC 2014 team leaders did it the hard way, with 
lots of guest operating and strategic planning.

With deference to Dave, K8CC, I think this beats the old method of handing 
a slot to the largest clubs, although each club did have an internal qual 
system. In this area Texas, none of the clubs is large enough to be granted 
a qual slot, so we would be at the mercy of "groveling" for a seat 
(probably too strong a word, but I'll use it) with club to our east or west.

All in all, the current qual processes are well documented. It's a very 
hard process and many people are not able or willing to take it on. That is 
a factor indeed, and so some terrific operators must seek spots based on 
their reputations and friendships. But all in all, I think the current 
process is the best one yet.

Jim George
N3BB

  At 05:48 PM 8/16/2016 -0400, Ed Sawyer wrote:
>You can't make something more like the Olympics that is fundamentally flawed
>in how it works.
>
>The Olympics tests people on EXACTLY the same event regionally with people
>competing head to head.  Those people then meet in one place and re-compete
>in EXACTLY the same event.
>
>WRTC has 50% of people that compete in very different circumstances and
>conditions doing mostly the same thing but not necessarily (HP, LP, Mult)
>and then they meet and almost 100% do something different in the final
>competition.
>
>50% of the participants are just friends of the first 50%.
>
>Adding video and sound and having visitors doesn't change the above.  Sorry.
>
>Ed  N1UR