Frequently Asked Questions

Hi to all,
first of all our best thanks to Sanctioning Committee, for their irreplaceble work, their experience and their dedication. The rules we revised may have some mistakes but you may be sure that without their support, errors would have been much larger!Also many thanks to the community of contesters that are always helping our and past WRTC Committee members with their comments and ideas.

Some rules have changed, and here we provide some explanations and clarification of the rules: we wanted to focus on what rules were needed as quickly as possible, and believe us, we did it that way! Going forward, we will continue to answer your questions.

To begin, our philosophy has been to open up WRTC to more operators and not be only for the top guns. We also wanted more participation from areas that had not been able to qualify before. And of course we need and welcome more young operators! There will be plenty of the best operators at WRTC 2022 even though these new rules for qualifying are different than for past WRTCs.

WRTC-Style categories: these categories proved to have too many difficulties of administering fairly and have been removed.

TL must be in the top 20 of previous 3 WRTCs: we’ve received good suggestions on this and understand the concerns on being restrictive, but we want to maintain our direction of making seats available to those who have not been able to compete in a WRTC.

TM selection from anywhere in the world: our initial idea was to reward people that invested time, skill and money to achieve a top result. We know that in some areas competitiveness might be a bit lower, but participation should rise. The result is that we will have in Bologna people who really wanted to be there and dedicated themselves to qualifying. That’s why we decided to relax the previous restriction in order to open selection to the whole world. In this way a TL will have more chances to find a TM and we are pretty sure that no TL will remain without a TM. If this happens the Organizing Committee will provide one.

Accordingly, everyone should attempt to make the bestqualification scores, regardless if they reach the TL position,because they might be selected as a TM by any of the 63 TLs (and TeamSponsors or Wild Card). After the teams are formed, there is nodifference between a TL and TM. There might be also some competitionnot to be the eleventh non-qualifier! This choice will make morequalified applicants available and less likely the Committee willhave to manage changes in team members.

Selection areas: everybody is looking at their own Selection Area, that’s normal! Our process to reach these final Selection Areas was developed from grid squares and QSO density in those grid squares. After a lot of work we have made these selections with just a few corrections required after some specific and appropriate suggestions. A Powerpoint presentation giving an overview of the method will be available for those interested.

TL allocation: following our work on Selection Areas it was clear that South America, Oceania, and Africa needed more chances than before to go to WRTC. As a result we gave more TL to these continents and reduced the number of European TLs. If the SA/OC/AF seats are not filled, the Organizing Committee will return TL seats to Europe in the most competitive Selection Areas.

LP weighting factor of 0.9: following the example of WRTC 2014, in a difficult choice about LP weighting factor in today’s environment, we’ve decided that 0.9 is the best choice.

Home selection area: the new definition of Home Selection Area recognizes a new way of life in ham radio. A lot of people now have licenses, passports, and residences in more than one country. Many people travel around the world more frequently and easier than before. The use of many more remote stations is growing all around the world. We are just taking a snapshot of the changing world and adapting rules to it.

Categories: since these categories are present in most contests we must take that into account. When these categories are no longer separate in the qualifying contests this rule might disappear. We feel like that will happen soon.

MS and M2 weighting factors: we are of the opinion that an operator’s skill cannot be assessed from the result of an MS-team of 10 or an MM-team of 20 operators, but that it is mirrored best in the single operator categories. MS,M2 and MM operations are very different from the team-of-twooperation in a WRTC event.

Regional versus worldwide contests (WAE, ARRL, ALL ASIAN, RDXC): there are 14 regional contests (7 per year). Only 2 or 3 of these contest are really necessary to qualify as TL, so we feel this is not a major issue. RDXC is an all-mode contest (but very far from USA population). WAE is one of the contests where you really need to be skilled and presents a scoring opportunity for smaller stations. So we think that these contests should be retained. We’ve decided to keep ARRL and All Asian because there are opportunities for good scores and for TM applicants.

Period for contests: why are no 2021 contests included in the Qualification Events? This is because published results for many 2021 contests will not be available when TL applications are evaluated. All TL will then need to select a TM and prepare for WRTC. So we can not include 2021contests in the list.

Number of youth teams: the reason for this many teams is easy to explain. We want to spur youngsters to get in the race! 25 years of age is still a very youthful operator and young adults are very competitive. If any of the Youth Teams are unfilled the Organizing Committee will add the seat to EU in the most competitive Selection Areas.

Special RDXC Scoring: RDXC scoring is treated differently for UA and non-UA stations because they are scored differently. UA and non-UA operators will receive Qualification Event Points based on comparison with other UA or non-UA stations only. UA stations will only be compared to others in the same Zone:

- EU3: UA2 scores must be compared to UA2 scores
- EU8: UA6 scores must be compared to UA6 scores
- AS1: UA9 scores from Zone 17 must be compared to UA9 scores from Zone 17
- AS2: UA9/0 scores from Zone 18 must be compared to UA9/0 scores from Zone 18
- AS7: UA0 scores from Zone 19 must be compared to UA0 scores from Zone 19