Hi everyone,
Thanks for the question and the answers given. Please let me share some
background to hopefully help with this discussion.
When writing the selection criteria for WRTC 2026 the organising team of
course looked at several earlier WRTCs as a guide. Many details have stayed
the same, with most of the changes made being in proportion to the team
numbers or reduced qualification period for the 2026 event.
For this particular question, we saw that WRTC 2022 put W1 and W2 together
in an area. WRTC 2018 had one area for W1, W2 and W3. WRTC 2014 had 1 Team
Lead (TL) position separately for W1, W2 and W3. There is no commonly
agreed approach that everyone will agree on.
The main arguments are:
With 3 TL positions for W1/2/3 as a group, there is feedback and evidence
that it is disproportionately more difficult for entrants from W3 to
qualify compared with W1. We see it's not impossible from past results, but
also that it's not well balanced.
With just 1 TL position for W1, W2 and W3 each separately, we have feedback
that this can be off-putting where a 'super-op / super-station' in an area
is assumed to nearly guarantee a position, so others may not even try to
qualify.
Many suggestions and requests for rule amendments were received (from 5
continents) after the original criteria were published. All were evaluated
independently, and only a handful taken forward. All rules and changes are
peer reviewed and also approved via the WRTC Sanctioning Committee. The aim
was to make qualification fairer for everyone in this area as a whole,
without taking away any Team Lead positions that had been announced
originally. We looked to find a solution for the complaints that our
"W1/2/3 area" rule could be better.
The idea is to keep the best of both worlds - everyone in W1/2/3 still has
3 Team Lead positions open for them to chase, but their qualifying scores
are calculated by comparing only against those in their own local area (W1,
W2 or W3.) For WRTC qualifying the points awarded are a fraction of a
maximum given for the local area leader's score in the same contest
category. At the end of qualifying each entrant's best scores are totalled.
There might be 3 x W1's qualifying, or 3 x W3's, or a mix. We can see from
past results that there are hundreds of contesters in each area, roughly
equal numbers in each area, and there are enough 'highly competitive'
entrants in each area that should make this approach viable.
There's an argument that this is too complicated and some of the discussion
here could be evidence of that. However the same approach has been used for
Africa and parts of South America several times before so it's not a new
concept at all, and it was assumed it should not cause confusion. We
explained in the website post announcing the selection criteria update that
the choice of the changes made were driven by feedback that we
investigated, and similar change in other areas was considered but ruled
out because of the number of contesters or other geographical
considerations.
Good Luck and Have Fun in CQ WW this weekend.
73,
Lee G0MTN
WRTC 2026 Organising Committee
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