Just out of curiosity, I looked at how the WRTC teams were determined in
2000, and how they are proposed to be determined in 2002:
(http://wrtc2000.bit.si/comm2.htm)
(http://www.wrtc2002.org/teams1.htm)
2000 2002
Asia 4 national (JA,JA,UA0/9,UA0/9) 2 national (JA,UA0/9)
2 wild 3 wild
Europe 20 national (DL,DL,EA,EA,I,I,UR 18 national (DL,DL,UA,UA,EA,I,G,F,
5 wild UA,SP,OK,F,G,YU,OH, 7 wild OH,OK,SK,SP,LY,UR,9A,
LY,HA,ON,9A,OM,S5) S5,HA,YU)
Oceania 0 national 0 national
1 wild 1 wild
Africa 0 national 0 national
1 wild 1 wild
S. America 2 national (LU,PY) 0 national
1 wild 2 wild
N. America 2 national (VE,VE) 1 national (VE)
1 wild 1 wild
USA 9 national (W,W,W,W,W,W,W,W,W) 10 national (W,W,W,W,W,W,W,W,W,W)
3 wild 2 wild
Other 1 champion 1 champion
0 wild 1 "joker's" wild
Total 52 50
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Countries that gain national teams:
UA (was 1, now 2)
SK (was 0, now 1)
Countries that lose national teams:
JA (was 2, now 1)
UA0/9 (was 2, now 1)
EA (was 2, now 1)
I (was 2, now 1)
VE (was 2, now 1)
ON (was 1, now 0)
9A (was 1, now 0)
OM (was 1, now 0)
LU (was 1, now 0)
PY (was 1, now 0)
The Finns are apparently planning for only 50 teams instead of 52.
Asia, South America, and North America (outside USA) each lose one
team, and the organizers now have a "joker's wild" team they can
assign to anyone worldwide. Europe and the US have effectively
gained representation, with Europe now counting for 50% of the WRTC
participants. (Is it really the case that 50% of the best contest
ops in the world live in Europe and less than 25% live in the USA?
USA teams have won eight out of the nine medals in previous WRTC
events.) Japan, with close to 50% of the world's ham population,
could conceivably have only one team representing it in WRTC 2002
(just 2% of the WRTC spots.)
So, there's a much greater emphasis on "wild card" teams (both members of a
wild card team must be from the same continent.) Two interesting twists to
how European wild card teams and the US teams are chosen:
* Europe:
3 wild card teams are assigned to "West Europe"
(C3,CT,DL,EA,EI,F,G,HB,HB0,HV,I,LX,OE,ON,PA,SV,T7,3A,9H)
3 wild card teams are assigned to "East Europe"
(EE,HA,LY,LZ,OK,SP,UA,UR,EU,ER,YL,YO,U,ZA,OM,S5,T9,Z3,9A)
1 wild card team is assigned to "North Europe"
(OH,SK,LA,OZ,TF)
* USA
10 teams are selected by the 10 most succesful contest clubs from USA by
the following selection process:
i) each club will nominate 10 candidates for US team captains - 5
candidates have to live in the "East" part of US (call areas W1, 2,
3, 4, 8 and 9) and 5 candidates has to live in the "West" part
of US (call areas W5, 6, 7, 0, KH6 and KL7)
ii) the organizer will rank these ("one point per nomination")
candidates
and selects 5 team captains from "East" and 5 team captains from
"West"
iii) each team captain will select a teammate (any US citizen allowed)
and these will form 10 teams. 2 wild card teams are assigned to US
citizens (or permanent residents)
So, there are more wild card teams in Europe, but they are trying to make sure
that the wild cards don't favor one part of Europe over another. This
presumably gives the oganizers a little more flexibility to pick the
best teams. The big winner here is "northern" Europe, which is guaranteed
three spots in WRTC 2002, but had only one in WRTC 2000. (Why is Greece
considered "west Europe?")
It's still the case that only the "most succesful" contest clubs in the US
will be directly involved in choosing the US "national teams," but they are no
longer guaranteed of having a club member make the WRTC. I presume they will
be allowed to nominate their own club members, but in order to make it,
those club members will probably have to be nominated by other clubs as well.
However, once selected, there does not appear to be any prohibition against
a team captain choosing as a teammate a member of her/his local club.
While there's no way to know just yet, I also suspect that the "east/west"
breakdown will mean more US representation from outside the northeast -
maybe even contesters from KH6 or KL7.
(I don't think they've defined how the "most succesful" contest clubs in the
US will be chosen, but I doubt a W5, KH6, W7, KL7, or W0 club will be in the
list. Wouldn't it be interesting if they picked one club from each call
district? :-)
--
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences President, UT Amateur Radio Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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