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IRTC
Italian
Radiosport Team Championship By Paolo Cortese, I2UIY/NH7DX (written for CQ Contest - Feb. 1998) Fifty four teams, 54 judges/referees, and some visitors and companions. Let's say a grand total of over 200 people were together almost two years ago in the Bay area for the WRTC. Who among this gang did not dream of how nice and interesting it would be to organize a WRTC in his country or in his area? I'm sure there were over 200 plans going on in as many minds. How it started It was a cold morning, not unusual in the Bay area Rusty, W60AT always says to keep a sweater or sweatshirt in your bag when you plan to visit San Francisco. Boy, he was right this time. It was Monday morning, July 15th, and the WRTC-96 was already history. Most of the WRTC crew had gotten up early to grab something to eat and catch a couple of buses to travel to Fisherman's Wharf, where they would catch d ferry that would take them to Napa Valley, across the bay. The clouds blended with the fog, and a cold wind was waking up all of us. Those who did not heed the warning were investing some money in a sweater in some of the many booths on the piers. Bruce Sawyer, AA6KX, was getting frustrated trying - hopelessly - to keep us together in line waiting to get on board, while Dick Dievendorff, AA6MC, was offering the leftover sweet rolls. These two souls, together with Carl, AI6V, were among the real heroes of WRTC-96. Not many remember them, though. Everybody was looking to get on board fast enough to find a seat inside the boat. I found a nice table close to a couple of local girls, who never paid any attention to us. Since we had no luck with them (this doesn't sound new), we started to talk about, guess what? How it would be nice to do a WRTC in Italy. There were four of us IT9BLB and IT9VDQ, who were Team Italy #1, K6F (they ended #40), and I0JBL and me I was a judge and Luciano was a referee. Luciano was maintaining that a WRTC could be possible in the surroundings of Rome, in central Italy. He stated that enough stations could be found to host the teams and that the major problem probably would come from raising the money. The two Sicilians were very interested in this story, but they live in a area that is too far from Rome to be of any help. I was extremely skeptical, I guess, because unfortunately, the greatest number of the Italian hams live in big buildings. It therefore could be very difficult finding enough stations within a relatively restricted area. We discussed this idea during the whole trip, as we needed something to do to pass the time. Who knows how many other discussions like ours were going on on that boat. The idea I had been very lucky to take part in both WRTCs - in 1990 in Seattle and two years ago in San Francisco. Both times I was very interested in everything about the organization of the event. It s not difficult to imagine the kind of difficulties the committees had to face Anyway, after that trip on the boat, the logistics of an "easy" WRTC were still gnawing at my mind. The problem was: How would it be possible to put on a competition similar to the WRTC, but avoid the difficulties that would make WRTC-2000 a real titanic enterprise? I tried to solve this problem simply by changing the target. The two WRTCs were reserved for the best operators that could be found. What would happen if we changed the target and made it for those who are three or four steps beneath the best operators? Talking about radio amateurs, Italy is not a big country. I take care of the QSL Bureau for the whole country, and I know exactly how many callsigns are really on the air by looking at the quantity of cards that each stations receives monthly. In fact, if you look at the major contests' rankings, you will see that three or four stations compete for the winning spots, and between 70 and 100 other hams participate. Generally only the first five of these log more than 1000 Qs. All the others are really little pistols. Since little pistols make up the majority of the entrants of the major contests, though, I felt that something should be done for them. The big guns don't need anything, because they obviously find satisfaction competing only with other stations at their level. For this reason, as the national HF Contest Manager, I usually pay a lot of attention to those who would like to do more but cannot due to limited equipment. Some of these guys could become very good operators if Italy were a country with many big stations where they could learn and practice as guest operators Unfortunately, this is not possible. Let's try In the fog of the Bay area I started to see not a WRTC, but an IRTC - Italian Radio-sport Team Championship. Why not? In the November issue of Radio Rivista, the Italian ham magazine, I put a short note describing what I was imagining I asked anyone who might be interested in participating to give me a call. Two of the greatest difficulties of such a competition were finding as many operating sites as were needed and finding enough money to support so many people for the necessary time. Let's cross off both these obstacles. Here were the main distinctive features of IRTC:
As you can see, basically most of the rules are the same as for WRTC. I only changed the scoring system, giving 1 point to each QSO both on SSB and CW, and I allowed the use of a voice keyer, because someone living in a building with neighbors might have trouble calling "CQ contest" for 12 hours I shortened the contest to 12 hours, because the IARU Championship in Italy starts at 2 PM, and most of the Observers would need to travel to their appointed station. It Works! Immediately after my note was printed in the magazine, I received about 20 phone calls. Twenty possible participating teams meant 40 operators, which was not bad considering that 100 I-logs submitted for the CQWW SSB was a real success for us. The IARU contest comes at a bad time of the year for us, because from mid-July until mid-August everybody goes on holiday. It could be that someone who would like to participate might not do so because he is not be at home. Well, I thought, with 20 possible participants, we would be happy to have 15 of them in the end I was wrong. We lost some of them, but we gained some new ones and ended up with "21+1" teams. That "+1" is a team that called me just two weeks before the contest, but I was not able to find an Observer for them I allowed them to participate, offering to check their log with the others. The Observers I was not concerned about finding the necessary Observers, because I thought that was a minor problem. It ended up being the major obstacle for the success of the IRTC. The last Observer was found just two weeks before the competition, and I ended up praying that nobody would get a bad cold or have some other trouble, because we had no replacements. The problem was we did not know where the participants would operate from, and I could not ask the Observer to drive 500 km or more to meet his team. A rule that I tried to follow was to find an Observer who came from a different area than the team. The Rules As I said, most of the rules were the same as in the last WRTC, nothing other than two antennas (tribander + wire), two radios, keyer, key, microphone, and computer for logging. No PacketCluster©, no interfaces to switch band from the computer keyboard, no antenna switch. One point for each QSO, and the multipliers were the ITU zones, HQ stations, and DXCC countries worked on each band. The Participants I'm sure that most of the callsigns shown in the accompanying tables will sound new to the many readers. Some of them are active under several contest callsigns with good results considering the equipment they use. Some others are real newcomers, but this was not a problem. As I said before, even if the IRTC was open to everybody, the main target was to include these little pistols. Of course, we were looking for some big guns, but they had something else to do that weekend. Some merry fellow even said that they did not join because they were afraid to lose. Who knows? Anyway, some of the participants really took the game seriously. They entered many tests before the event, including the WPX CW. They followed the same rules as the IRTC for practice. On the other hand, some did not take it seriously at all, as they even stopped during the contest for dinner (!). You know, though, we're Italian, and food is very important to us. The Contest I'm sure I don't need to explain that the two past WRTCs were not "common" contests. Probably the initial plan of the two committees was to have a given number of teams with quite similar equipment compete against one another to highlight their individual skills. However, in the end we did not have the WRTC teams enter the competition on the same level as all the other competitors, they were very privileged. In 1990 in Seattle each WRTC team was a multiplier It was like being the only ham on an island you just have to be fast at logging Qs. Of course, you have to find the mults, and this made the game more difficult. In 1996 in San Francisco the WRTC teams could not be considered multipliers, because the WRTC went together with the IARU contest. However, the Committee did everything very well, offering lots of special prizes to those who worked the very special 1x1 WRTC callsign, and once again it was like being the only ham on the island. I asked myself what would happen if no one was able to recognize the WRTCers among the many other participants. The WRTCers would face many more difficulties, such as calling CQ and getting no answer, calling a multiplier that wouldn't pay attention to them, trying to call CQ 1 kHz away from W3LPL, and so on. Probably the scores would be greatly reshuffled, and who knows? The competition might be closer to a "traditional" contest in which those who are "really" operating 100W and a tribander from a common country have a lot of difficulties. We did not want to put on a separate contest for the IRTC, and we were not (financially) able to offer special incentives to other participants We therefore were forced to choose the "other" way: anonymous callsigns, entering the contest like common participants. Each team was free to apply for a special 2x1 callsign or use his regular callsign. Having a special callsign was not a particular advantage, as the Italian contest callsigns are not rare anymore. A short callsign is just good for those who have a long callsign. Choosing to operate this way, obviously we could have several teams finish the contest with very low totals due to the real difficulties of operating barefoot. We decided to try and see what happened. My forecast was that 600 QSOs in 12 hours was possible if the band conditions were reasonable. We could not expect too much from 10 and 15 meters, so most of the competition had to go on 20 and 40. I said 600 Qs, because I was not taking into account the number of times the teams would have to switch bands to get a new multiplier. Anyway, a final result of between 500 and 600 QSOs was very much possible. I could not forecast how many multipliers they would work, because everyone was operating from his chosen location, so there could be one or more bad directions. Another factor affecting the forecast was geography Italy is a long, narrow country which runs north to south. I live near Milano, in northern Italy, and I know what I can work from here. When I went down to Rome to operate from HV4NAC and 1A0KM, and when I went to Naples to operate from I8UDB and I8RIZ, the difference was amazing. This great difference is noticeable in the QSOs with Europe. From Rome, Naples, and generally from southern Italy, you have a great path to central Europe. The signals from DL's, F's, SP's, and OK s are much louder than in northern Italy. Therefore, when operating with 100W into a tribander, it is easy to forecast that most of the QSOs will be within Europe, and the stations located in areas of good European propagation could be difficult to beat. Since we had two teams from Sicily and one from near Naples, I was afraid that the gap between these teams and the rest of the gang would be too big. Log Checking We did not have a dedicated software, so we asked the participants to use CT, NA, or TR for logging, and to keep track of the DXCC multipliers on paper It was not easy, but it was the same for everyone, so nobody had an advantage. All of the entrants logged with CT in the IARU mode. After the contest, as at WRTC 96, the Observers allowed each team to correct the QSOs that had been marked on a form, and they then confiscated the diskettes It took about 10 days to get them all by mail, because here e-mail is not yet very popular. Just after the contest I posted a message asking old friends to let me have their IARU logs to help with log checking as I needed a larger database. I must thank AA4NC, DK3GI, IK2UCK, K3ZO, LY1DS, LY5A, N6ZZ, OD5NJ, OH1AF, RK9CWW, S50HQ, S51TA, S58MU, UN8LW, UU5J, UY1HY, VE3EJ, ZP5XF, and ZW5B for sending me their logs. I made a database with almost 40,000 Qs. This was of a great help cross-checking the QSOs, and especially checking the received reports (ITU zones and HQ abbreviations). I had followed the usual CQWW log checking procedure looking for Uniques, Not-in log, and Bad callsigns. The unique callsigns were not considered bad unless there was a reason able possible call. I guess that the results of log checking were very good if you consider that for the most part the IRTC operators were not "professional" contesters. The percentage of QSOs with one or more mistakes goes from 2% to 14.8%. However, if we discard the best and the worst value, we can see that all the others are between 2.3% and 9.9%, which is not too bad. The Results You probably don't know who these entrants are, but I do I had my favorites for different reasons: a couple of them because of their location and another two or three because I know that they were really serious. As I mentioned before, one of them even entered the WPX CW following the same rules of IRTC to test himself and the equipment! The winner was the IQ4T team. They operate from Forlì which is not far from the Republic of San Marino (T77). The operators were IK4HVR and IK4SXJ. They used a 3-element tribander and a 40 meter vertical from about 900 ft above sea level. These guys started entering contests about three or four years ago. They don't have a great setup, but they are serious and want to improve. Their strategy was mostly to search and pounce looking for new multipliers. Their QSO total was close to what I had expected, but their goal was to log 239 mults, which was just enough to win. Even if the score for CW and SSB QSOs was the same, about two thirds of the activity was on CW to take advantage of the low power. Second place went to IR9Z operated by IT9ORA and IT9STG. They were at a 2100 ft height using a KT34XA and a dipole on 40 I think they used the wrong strategy, spending too much time on SSB and not enough time looking for mults. As I had forecast, it was easy for them to work France, Germany, and northern Italy. They missed first place by than 2%. This was my favorite team due to their location The operators are often on the air during major contests, but they never have great results, also because they have never been really serious. Third place was II3X operated by IK3QAR and I3JTE They were located on the sea, almost inside the city of Venice. They operated a lot of CW, and this was the team that logged the greatest number of W QSOs (204). Perhaps they missed some multipliers that were active only or mostly on SSB. These are young operators who have been contesting for several years. They are quite experienced, but they have never had good equipment to support their skills They used a KT34XA and an inverted-V dipole. Fourth place went to II2E operated by IK2GSN and I2CZQ This was probably the most experienced team. Both operators have been active on a local team that enters the major contests signing IQ2X. Their mistake was to spend too much time at the beginning of the contest CQing, as they do when they are using a little more power. By the time they understood that this was a different game, it was too late to recover. They used a TH5 and an inverted-V dipole from downtown Brescia, not far from Milano, at about 330 ft. Fifth place went to IU4Z operated by IK4WMB and IK4BHO. These operators are really new and nobody, including myself, was expecting a good score from them. They made the second best mult total, and they were the second most accurate team. For some reason they did not made enough Qs. if they had made more, they could have been in the race tor winner. They operated from sea level with a 2-element quad and a vertical for 40 meters. Their location was close to Ravenna, on the sea in front of Croatia. Probably these results and the story are insignificant to most of you who are accustomed to reading about world records and outstanding performances on these pages. However, we must remember that it someone breaks the world record m the CQWW, there are several hundreds of other participants in the same category who will never achieve that result, but who will be back on the air the next year helping someone else break that record again I guess that too often we neglect those operators, forgetting that without all those little pistols, the winners would never achieve those fantastic records. And without them, Martti or Ville or Carl or Jim or Jose would probably still win, but without the unbelievable results that make the big competitions magic. These little pistols are involved in many of the small contests that make the band noisy between CQWW and WPX and again between WPX and CQWW. In these small contests they can achieve very good results, but nobody writes about them I guess that this is wrong. After IRTC all of the participants asked to do it again next year I really don't know if it will be possible, because it was very hard to find all the Observers. However, I'll do my best, because the operators deserve it. It would be nice to have this kind of competition organized in other countries with the same rules, and at the end make up a common ranking It could be a nice way to select teams for other larger competitions such as WRTC-2000. Most of all, it could be a fair way to select teams. If during the next IARU contest you listen to a very weak IQ2A station calling CQ with no answer, give him a call. He might be involved in the second IRTC, and your callsign might help him as much as he has helped you many times in the past!
Tables
Table 1 - Final ranking. The ten columns represent final ranking callsign used the two operators, observer, net QSOs (less the removed QSOs), ITU zones mults, HQ mults, DXCC mults, total mults and final score (less penalties). Please note that the last team (I5JHW) is the one who had no observer so they cannot be ranked with the others.
Table 2 - QSOs. SSB and CW QSOs, the teams are listed in alphabetical order.
Table 3 - Band by band. the number of Qs each team had on each band.
Table 4 - Accuracy. The five columns represent the following: final ranking, callsign, percentage of wrong Qs among the claimed Qs, number of Qs lost due to mistakes in the received exchange, and number of Qs lost due to mistakes in the callsign.
(by I2UIY - 1998) |
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