[CQ-Contest] WRTC Scoring Question

[Tonno Vahk]

Yes, that is how it is.

Every now and then people want to “give a chance” to stations not on seaside or hilltop or otherwise not being competitive. That is a dead end.

If the geography justifies creating a separate qualification area then it should be done. As simple as that.

But let the best operator/station combination in THAT qualification area win honestly in fair competition.

If there are so huge propagation differences in W1/W2/W3, then you can create 3 different areas and give 1 place for every area. Period.

Same for Baltics/Scandinavia. Split the qualification area then.

But for some obscure reason someone at some point came up with the idea of “solving” the inequality by not creating 3 different qualification areas but creating different score comparison areas within one qualification area.

Doing that results in much more unfairness and distortion of scores and conditions. And most entrants still do not understand that.

It directly works against the WRTC principles and seriously demotivates entrants in more active region. Not only it demotivates them to take part but directly forces them to start “making deals”. If there are 10 strong competitors then in normal situation they would all go flat out in honest battle trying to beat each other as the winner has a guaranteed place.

Now, they can’t do that. There is a serious prisoners’ dilemma. If they all go flat out nobody gets a place as they will dilute each others’ scores and the less active region takes/might take all the places. Ot the other region where deals are being made.

So they have to make a deal on who will start to qualify. Maybe they pay each other or do their own small qualification, whatever. It is unheard of, it is absurd. It is completely not thought through, not analyzed.

I had 5-6 strong stations (among my friends only) intending to start participating in qualification in the Baltics to do their best and gather points. Now it is completely killed. We are selecting 1 (one!) guy who will do that. Everyone else has to stand down as the organizers practically made it impossible for them to compete honestly. It is reality, it is happening!

I am simply amazed how such pure idiocy was invented and is there really nobody at the WTRC Sanctioning Committee actually controlling the process and thinking. Maybe they just don’t care or simply fail in their jobs. Nobody stood up to point out that this is crazy and violates all the principles and ideas of fair and honest competition. And just turns off most of the crowd who are forced to quit.

They make people compete in the same qualification area against people whom they actually can’t compete with as they are scored by other standards and other methods. How crazy is that?

If the WRTC people don’t then I wonder if people here on the reflector understand how wrong this all is?

This is what I am taking about that WRTC is failing and people are just destroying the idea.

73
ES5TV


On 25. Oct 2023, at 17:11, Mike Smith VE9AA <ve9aa at nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:

WRTC is not "exactly" about being 100% fair to compete for a TL spot. I
mean, they try but.



If it were completely fair there would be handicap points(?) against folks
with humongous stations

or super rare dx prefixes.



If you have 1 or 2 Superstations in your qualification selection area ,
without a lot of money to travel 12-15 times away from home, then you are
severely limited in what you can do to qualify.



(Oh, this is not a complaint.  I think I am just stating the
obvious-elephant in the room type stuff)



VE9AA





That may seem so but in W2 competing with W1 seems lopsided.



For example someone competing in central NJ with coastal Maine will have

two vastly different propagation conditions. We are talking strong morning

band openings 2-3 hours earlier in W1 Maine compared to W2.



Unless you have a superstation like RHR summit which is on the same

latitude as W1 then you stand a chance. If not, forget it.



I mean if you're going to just select the best of the best of the best

(with honors) in that whole encompassing W1-W3 region maybe just forget the

whole selection process and just pick all the big guns from W1.



Ria

N2RJ



Mike, Coreen & Corey

Keswick Ridge, NB



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