[CQ-Contest] WRTC Spotting

[Edward Sawyer]

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."