[CQ-Contest] Final WRTC 2022 Qualifying Rules

[Edward Sawyer]

These rules looking to be final, I would like to thank the Committee for clearly putting time, thought, and feedback into the output.

A few comments from my perspective:


-          I was disappointed by the reversal of the Team Mate definition.  I thought that requiring the TM to come from the same qualifying area would make it a much more pure team competition and much better representation being an international competition.  The top 10 from the area requirement is a good one but I think it should have gone further.

-          An interesting change allowing someone who goes to the same area most of the time being able to qualify as if living in that area.  This is really changing the game in zones 7, 8, 9, 20, 33.  Not sure whether its good or bad, but definitely changes the landscape there.

-          I am not sure why there is literally no qualifying in 2021.  It would seem that the 1H2021 would pick up A LOT of contest activity and still be 12 months from the competition.

-          Making ARRL DX worth the same as All Asia DX from a W/VE perspective is really distorting.  The top W1 station in AA CW in 2017 had a total 80 Qs.  In ARRL DX CW is 2500 - 4000!  Not that it matters much since likely if you are using either one of those contests to qualify, you are losing.  It would make WAY more sense for ARRL DX to be worth 950 points for W/VE and WAE to be worth 800 points.

-          2 teams from China with only 1 or 2 teams from highly competitive areas in EU and W/VE does not make sense to me.

-          6 Youth teams?  I get the motivation but that is a serious haircut to the active contesting crowd that exists today.  I sure hope that statement is backed up by active involvement of clubs to get youth more involved, which is hard to do when the first qualifying contest is in 2 weeks.  Are there actually 12 under 21 age contesters out there and active at the level being implied here?  (if they are older than that they don't qualify in 2022).  Maybe there are.

And the elimination of the M2 Qualifying team path I think is also a concern but I never see that happening unless the Sanctioning Committee takes the lead - and it should.  There just is not enough time after selection to do this.

Ditto the concept of allowing the world's top individual - DBCQing - wonders to actually compete - one on one in this environment.  That skill set is swept under the rug with the current WRTC qualifying and rules.

Ed  N1UR