[SCCC] WRTC

[Jim McCook]

It was interesting to see the comments about conditions between W6 and 
the WRTC stations.  My only real reason for getting into IARU at all was 
to work the PT and PW stations on CW only.  I spent about 15 hours 
trying to dig them out, and filling in with other interesting DX to keep 
from getting too bored.  It was a fun hunt.

The biggest surprise was discovering how weak they all were.  Obviously 
they moved as a group from band to band, starting on 15m, moving to 20, 
40 and 80 in succession.  My antenna was always on Brazil during those 
times, but only two or three of them were stronger than S-3 on 15 
meters.  I assumed they all had their own antennas on Europe.  One or 
two reached almost S-9 (like PT5X), but this must have been because 
their antennas were now on USA.  I worked 43 of them on 15m, all but three.

20m wasn't much better, for the same reasons.  I managed to work 17 of 
them here.

40 was much better.  I worked 45 of them, only missing PW5E.  I thought 
that station had shut down, but later found them on 80.  Several hours 
passed without any sign of them.  I assume they had some sort of 
problem.  All the others were very active on 40.  Maybe they decided to 
do S&P.  It would be interesting to know what happened to PW5E.  Signals 
were better on 40 than on the other bands but most were still quite 
weak, surprisingly. 

80 was interesting because there was a big difference in their signals.  
Some were so weak it was hard to get the call; others were almost 
booming in.  With similar fixed antennas, the big difference must have 
been due to their QTH variations.

I did work 3 of them on 10m, but that band was a wasteland in Southern 
California.

It was very sad to read K1ZM's note about the sabotage of YT6A's team.  
What I can't understand is how the uniques were all in that log, not in 
others.  Aren't the WRTC stations supposed to be anonymous?  There 
should be no way they could be identified as YT6A team, so how could 
this sabotage be accomplished unless some sort of clue were sent out by 
PT5L?  It wouldn't be difficult to do... just something very subtle with 
or without some advance planning.  Perhaps one of their team members had 
a particular operating quirk that could provide the ID.  It could have 
been unintentional on his part.  I don't make any accusation, just the 
point that it shouldn't be possible to identify a particular station as 
one to pump up.  It could have been sabotage or it could have been an 
effort to pad the score.  Obviously this is a serious problem for WRTC 
that can destroy the playing field.

Unfortunately, the only way to prevent this in the future is to lay down 
rules to prevent any way of making such a special ID by the operators, 
which is probably impossible or unrealistic.  It will be interesting to 
see if anyone comes up with a solution.

Jim
W6YA