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.com. Good evening, everyone. It's time for ham
talk live. It's episode number 97 The world radio
sport team championships with Doug k1dg recorded
live on Thursday January 11th 2018 I'm your host
Neil rap WB 9 VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this
episode of ham talk live tonight Doug Grant k1dg
joins us to talk about all things WRTC, and we'll
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Doug Grant, K1DG is our guest tonight. He received
his first ham radio license in 1967 at the age
of 13. He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering from Lowell Technological Institute,
which is now UMass Lowell. And he has more than
30 years experience in the semiconductor industry,
mostly at analog devices where he worked in engineering
marketing and product line management for analog
mixed signal RF and wireless products. Doug is
an avid contester and an instructor at Contest
University. He's won numerous contests and won
the first WRTC back in 1990. He's been the Dayton
Hamvention Contest Forum moderator since 1994.
And he was the chairman of the last WRTC, which
was in Boston in 2014. Doug is now an independent
consultant specializing in semiconductor and
wireless technologies. And he's nice enough to
join us tonight to talk WRTC. So Doug, welcome
to the show. Oh, thanks, Neil. Good to be here.
Well, tell our listeners about what WRTC is in
case they don't know and and give us a little
background of how it got started Sure. Well WRTC
stands for the world radio sport team championship.
So let's take that apart radio sport, of course
is contesting and Contesting has been with us
for a very long time and ham radio back I once
heard a guy from the FCC say that the first radio
contest took place when the third guy got on
the air, and the other two wanted to see who
could reach him first. So we've been contesting
around for a long time. Most hands play in some
contests. Most people have had some experience
with field day. And you can see there what's
kind of going on. Clubs typically try to put
up a bigger antenna than their rival club, get
access to a higher location with a clear shot
in all directions because they know that those
might give them an advantage and improve their
score. But that points out the fundamental inequality
in radio contests. A station with a big antenna
on a big hilltop will generally have an advantage
over a guy with small antennas down in the valley.
So there are ways of sort of tilting the playing
field in your favor. Some operators, of course,
even go as far as traveling to rare countries
and areas with good propagation to make higher
scores. Well, back in the old Soviet Union in
the 80s, they developed a series of regional
and then national competitions where all the
competitors had identical antennas. They're in
the same geographic area. And now the only variable
left was operator skill. And they wanted to demonstrate
or find out who the best operators were. So a
group in Seattle, including K7SS, K7LXC, N0AX,
and some other guys, took that concept to the
US in 1990, and the WRTC was born. The format
is two operator teams. all using the same amount
of power, similar antennas and in the same geographic
location. It's now evolved to where it's overseen
by a sanctioning committee consisting of the
organizers of the past events and they select
the next host country and they provide guidance
on the team selection process and rules and so
forth. And the goal is to hold WRTC every four
years, making it more or less the Olympics of
ham radio. There's where the championship part
comes in. So we've had WRTCs after Seattle. The
next one was in San Francisco in 1996. The next
one was in Slovenia in 2000, then Finland in
2002, Brazil in 2006, Russia in 2010, and in
the Boston area in 2014. The contest takes place
concurrently with the IARU HEF Championship event,
which takes place the second full weekend in
July every year. All right, well this year it
is going to be in Germany so fill us in on What's
going on over in Germany to prepare for this
and and what to expect this summer? Well, the
the the German organizers made a very strong
case to hold the event there for 2018 and So
they were awarded the hosting rights and we're
expecting the event to run with classic German
precision Actually, the organizers have really
been hard at work for the last three and a half
years getting things ready. They did a few things
differently. They've increased the number of
teams to 63. That's up from the 59 we had in
Boston, and that'll be the largest field ever.
So 49 of the teams were selected based on having
the highest scores in qualifying events over
the previous two years. The defending champions
were automatically invited. That makes 50. There
are three youth teams where both operators have
to be under 25 years of age. There are five wild
-car teams selected by the organizers. And then
there are five sponsored teams, and those are
groups of operators who provided some major donations
to the event, as well as being very highly qualified
operators themselves. The organizers will provide
each team with the exact same station. It'll
be a spider beam on a 12 meter pole, wire antennas
for 40 and 80 meters, a tent, a generator, some
tables and chairs, and that's pretty much it.
The operators have to bring their own radios,
their logging computers, antenna switches, filters,
anything else they need to operate the contest,
keyers, headphones, microphones, and so forth.
The equipment provided by the organizers is entirely
funded by donations, and they get some advertising
and some sponsorships from some of the major
manufacturers and distributors. They're not done
with their fundraising, by the way, and they're
still looking for donations. So if anyone wants
to help them out, you can check out their website
at wrtc2018 .de for Deutschland. Now the area
in Germany where the stations will be set up,
is about halfway between Berlin and Leipzig.
It's a very flat area, so no team will have an
advantage or disadvantage due to local terrain.
So nobody will be up on a hill, and nobody will
be down in the valley with a hill in front of
them, so they'll all have pretty flat ground
around them. And each team will have a referee
sitting in the tent watching them and listening
to both stations to make sure they follow the
rules and play the game fairly. Getting selected
as a referee was another interesting process.
They had, I think, a couple of hundred applications
for referee positions and selected enough to
fill all the stations from all around the world.
So that's what the competition's about. In addition
to the actual competition, over the years, the
social side of WRTC has evolved really into a
significant part of the event. The organizers
usually provide some sightseeing tours of their
area and lots of free time for the operators
to get to know each other, which comes about
usually after many years of talking on the radio.
Every WRTC I've attended, I've met someone new
and got a chance to see who was on the other
end of the microphone or the other end, the other
key of guys I've talked to for years and years
and years. In 2014 in Boston, we actually organized
an additional thing. We organized a thing called
the Ham Widows Ball, which was partially funded
by the Asmi Foundation. And that gave the competitors
and the referees, spouses and significant others
a chance to meet. And they got to share stories
about the crazy hams in their lives. They didn't
let any of the competitors or referees in the
room. I've only heard rumors of some of the stories
they talked about, but it was a big hit. And
I think there'll be a comparable event in Germany
this year. So, uh, no, um, no trash talking.
Oh, there's a lot of that, you know, the, uh,
you know, late nights in the, uh, in the bar
enjoying a cocktail and, uh, uh, so forth. Uh,
there's a lot of trash talk, uh, the rides on
buses to go to the sightseeing venues and so
forth. There's another opportunity for people
to, uh, uh, make it clear that they're going
to win and everyone else is going to be behind
them. Well, this is the big time competition
and one of the things that I've been saying over
and over again the last couple of days since
I've been doing some news stories on this is
It's the best of the best. And you've got some
of the finest contesters in the world participating
in this thing. And one of the quotes that I loved
from Bryant KBG5HVO and talking to him, he was
picked for one of the youth teams, was if you
look in the dictionary under the word underdog,
His picture is right there. Yeah, I don't believe
that for a minute. Some of these young guys are
so enthusiastic. Uh, they, uh, they're just going
to come out of the, come out of the gate at full
blast. And, uh, they might show some of the,
uh, some of the more experienced teams, a thing
or two. Well, I was trying to encourage them
and tell them, you know, Hey, you guys are going
to have some advantages over this, but, uh, over
the old guys like us, but, uh, they, they weren't,
uh, they weren't buying it too much, but they
were enthused nonetheless. Well, uh, tell us
about some of these teams that are, that are
competing. I know we can't talk about all 63
here, but. But talk about a few of the teams
that you know are familiar with that will be
competing and maybe some of the expected front
runners. Is there like seeding? Well, there's
no formal seeding to it. There's a lot of informal
handicapping and rumors and stories swapped around
the bar. In 2014, the big question was who was
going to be second and third because everyone
figured that N6MJ and KL9A were probably going
to run away with it, which they did. But you
never know what's going to happen. I think the
teams that finally did play second and third
were a little bit of a surprise. The oddsmakers,
I think, had some of the other teams placed higher.
There'll be 63 teams, as we said, representing
or with people from 35 different countries. And
it's an interesting mix of people ranging from
Bryant, KG5, HBO at 14. I think the oldest one
will be like 71 or 72. And of course, everything
in between. Like most hams, you would expect
a lot of them to be engineers or working in a
technical profession of some kind or having progressed
in their careers up to a management position,
but not all of them. For example, those guys
who won in Boston, N6MJ and KL9A, MJ is a pharmacy
auditor, KL9A is a grocery store manager. So
it's not like everyone is a hardcore engineer
and and they're going to use those technical
skills to win. It's really an interesting cross
-section of society. Other guys that I think
will probably do well, you can't count them out,
the silver medalists from 2014, a team from Slovakia,
OM3GI and OM3BH, they've qualified again, so
they'll be there. They may have an advantage
knowing the propagation from Central Europe better
than the Americans do. The bronze medalist from
2014, DJ5MW and DL1IAO will also be there. The
gold medalist from Russia in 2010, RW1A and RA1A,
they will be there again. There's one sort of
a quiet guy who has a very good chance. VE3EJ
from Canada will be competing again. He's kind
of a quiet guy, doesn't go out front too much,
but he won the gold medal in Brazil in 2006 and
came in fifth in 2014, so he's one we'll all
have to be watching. The competing teams will
include three YLs. Two of them, DLA DYL and DL1
QQ, were teammates in Boston. And it was funny,
I got a... We had a live scoreboard running and
my wife called me during the competition from
one of the tours that she was on and said, hey,
what's the call sign of the German girls team?
I want to watch their score and everybody here
wants to know how they're doing. And so they
actually did very well. They came in the 21st
out of the 59 teams, but they're not on the same
team this year. They're on two different teams.
So it'll be interesting to see how they do. The
third YL is actually the daughter of ZL3IO. She's
a 16 -year -old with the call sign ZL4YL. She's
also a fine operator. In fact, I just shipped
her a plaque for the WPXCW contest last year.
She had the highest score in the rookie category
and one of the highest scores on the band that
she operated, so she's a pretty good operator.
There's another father bringing an offspring,
VY2ZM, is bringing his son, KK6ZM, to operate
with him. PY1NX and PY2SEX from Brazil started
in ham radio together 20 years ago. My operating
partner, N2NT, and I have operated together off
and on for about 40 years, and we'll be back
there in Germany in July. trying to see what
we can do. We won a bronze medal in Brazil, so
we're hoping we can get up on the medal stand
in Germany as well. So it's a mix of veterans,
some new people who have not been to WRTC before,
a lot of people that I've met, it'll be good
to see them again, and a lot of people that I
haven't met in person. So I'm really looking
forward to July. Sounds like an excellent time.
And, um, I'm just wondering, do they have, do
they have betting lines on that in Vegas? Can
you, can you say you can bet on anything in Vegas?
Right. So there was someone who wanted to organize
something, uh, in the Boston, uh, WRTC. And I
told them, we really didn't want to hear about
it. So I don't know anything. Oh my goodness.
Well, it sounds like a. a really neat time and
we've got again some of the finest operators
in the world competing on a level playing field
and so it should be interesting. Now for those
who aren't big into contesting or maybe the casual
contester we'll say, can they start looking for
teams to work? Oh absolutely and I think the
Germans will probably do something similar to
what we did in Boston. We had awards available
for stations that contacted all the WRTC competing
stations. They were all clearly identifiable.
We locked up the one -by -one call signs for
that event when we had it here. So W1A through
Z, K1A through Z, and N1A through Z with a few
dropped out for Since we didn't need all of the
possible combinations, we were able to get rid
of some of the more troublesome letters, the
longer ones on CW and the easily confused ones.
But we had special call signs that made it easy
to find the WRTC competitors. And we gave out
awards for anybody who contacted all of them,
a special prize for the first station to contact
all of them. Since you can work the same station
on multiple bands, we gave out an award for the
most contacts with the competing stations. So
I'm sure that they'll have something like that
organized in this WRTC. So yeah, if you can't
make it there in person, the next best thing
is to get on the air and work all these guys.
girls they they need the contacts and They they'll
be going real fast and they'll get your call
sign on the first time through you won't have
to repeat it and They'll be zipping right along
All right some good information there about WRC
WRTC 2018 coming up in July. Well, we'll grow
kind of come if I can talk we're going to come
back with Doug and Take your calls and your tweets
and comments and questions about WRTC right after
this word from the National Voice of America
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Call us on voice with Skype at HamTalk Live or
give us a call at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812
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Make sure you check us out on Facebook, Twitter
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information about the topics that we discuss
here on the show and it's time now for your calls.
So if you have a question or comment for Doug,
give us a call. That phone number again is 812
-NET -HAM -1, 812 -638 -4261. You can also Skype
us. We're on Skype at HamTalk Live, or you can
tweet us at HamTalk Live as well. And we'll be
happy to hear from you. And you can talk to Doug,
K1DG, about the World Radio Sport Team. championships
and the 2018 competition will be coming up in
mid -July. So let's check the tweets here and
looks like we don't have anything just yet so
give us a call at 812 Nat Hamwon or give us a
tweet and we'll take your questions. Now one
of the things I want to talk about here with
Doug, we had Jim George on the author of Contact
Sport It's been a little over a year ago now,
I guess Which was a book that he wrote based
on a lot of the the drama of WRTC 2014 and you
were involved in in helping get that all put
together. So tell us a little bit about how the
book, Contact Sport, figured into the competition.
Well, I had some plans of trying to use the WRTC
as a way of getting some more publicity into
the general public and the general population
about ham radio and specifically about contesting.
The last coverage that I'm aware of in sort of
mass media about contesting was from a 1958 article
in Sports Illustrated called The Battle of the
Hams. And I was hoping we could get some broad
market coverage. And while I was thinking about
that, it was brought to my attention that there's
a parallel hobby to ham radio. That most people
don't understand and haven't heard of called
competitive birding Don't call it birdwatching.
The birders are very sensitive to that but birding
and The birders have a competition just like
ours. They have their WRTC. It's called a big
year instead of being a 24 -hour contest It's
a year long and the object of the game is to
see as many different species of birds as you
can within the limits of North America Now that
sounds as arcane a hobby as radio contesting,
but a guy wrote a book about it and it became
a best seller and was made into a movie. So I
figured maybe I could get that guy interested
in ham radio contesting. So I sent him an email
and said, I have your next book, call me. And
we got to chatting on the phone for a while and
he had never heard of ham radio at all, much
less contesting. And he was intrigued. And over
the course of the next couple of years, I got
him interested in writing the book and I figured
this will be great. You know, he had a connection
with a big publisher. It was going to be wonderful.
So about a month before WRTC, he called me up
and said, you know, I'm sorry, I'm going to have
to drop out. I can't do your book. And the reason
was that he had been a reporter for the Denver
Post out in Colorado. And he covered all of the
legislative stuff that went on to the legalization
of marijuana in Colorado and his publisher decided
that would be a better book to write than a book
about ham radio contesting. So they killed the
book and he had to drop out. So that left me
looking for someone to write the book. Now I've
known Jim George for a very long time and he
wrote a book called Reunion which touched a lot
on his growing up and high school years, getting
into ham radio and his life. And so I called
him up and said, Jim, I know it's short notice,
but how would you like to write the WRTC book?
And he said, when do you need me there? And can
you make sure I have full access to the teams?
And I agreed to that immediately. And he showed
up and he rode around. He went with the German
team that eventually got the bronze medal. got
lost driving in the woods of southeastern Massachusetts
with them, got lost driving back to the hotel,
but he had a pretty good time as an observer
and wrote, I thought, a pretty good book of the
whole event. I think he did capture most of the
flavor of what went on, and I was very happy
with the result. He did get it on Amazon and
in Barnes and Noble. I don't know how many copies
he sold, but I'm certainly satisfied with the
outcome that there was a book about it. We got
some additional press coverage here and there.
We got coverage in the Wall Street Journal, which
was pretty cool. We got coverage on an NPR weekly
radio show called Only a Game, where they made
us their feature article. uh, talking about the
game of ham radio contesting, uh, that's still
archived. If anybody listening hasn't heard that,
you should go and find it. It's, uh, it's terrific.
Um, and, uh, and by the book too, the book was,
uh, the book was quite good. Yep. And I know
Jim's been working on the audio version of his
book, contact sport. And, uh, I believe has that
finished up now and, uh, Not sure if it's quite
available yet or just about available, but should
be very soon if not already and So you can get
the audio version as well with him reading it
I have to take credit by the way for the for
the title of the book We kicked around a lot
of ideas. I thought contact sport was a clever
play on both the fact that it's a sport and it's
about making contacts. We don't really bump into
each other or hit each other very much. It's
not that kind of contact sport. We hope. Well,
we hope. My other choice was dancing with the
sky, which I thought was... Also pretty cool
and sort of romantic, but he didn't like it very
much. So he went with contact sport and I think
it, I think it worked fine. Yeah, I think it
did too. Well, that's a, that's a cool story.
and there was some drama there and so that made
for a good book and I appreciate Jim coming on
and talking to us about it on the show before
and still get some updates from him as to what's
going on. Well if you have a question you'd like
to ask about WRTC, give us a call at 812 -638
-4261. That spells netham1 or you can tweet it.
or give us a call on Skype. It's HamTalk Live
on Skype. We have about seven or eight minutes
here left with Doug, so give us a call at 812
-638 -4261 and you can get your questions hopefully
answered from one of the experts of WRTC, Doug
Grant, K1DG. Why don't we've talked a little
bit about the youth teams. We talked about Bryant
a little bit but Mateus was the number one seed
more or less for the youth teams and then you've
got some And he's in Chile and then you've got
some Over in Europe that are going to be competing.
So tell us a little bit about the youth teams
Well, I think that's been an important part of
WRTC for a while back to I guess the the Event
in Brazil in 2006. I think that was where the
first youth teams were brought in as an attempt
to kind of diversify the competitor base from
just a bunch of Middle -aged guys middle -aged
engineers and managers that was sort of the perception
And I think it's been beneficial. Some of these
guys who've been on previous youth teams have
made friendships by selecting a teammate from
another country that they didn't know very well
and kind of put the station together quickly
at the event and get going. It's good to see
these young guys coming into the sport and getting
passionate about it. All the guys who... were
selected for the youth teams this time had very
good qualifying numbers as well. So these are
just not selected for the fact that they're kids.
They had darn good scores to get in as well.
So I'm looking forward to meeting all these guys
and seeing them operate. And hopefully they won't
beat us too badly. One thing that I'm sure that's
going to come out of it is that they're going
to make some new friends, not just among the
competitors and referees and the official folks
in the WRTC, but one thing that happened in Boston
was that this happened for all the teams. We
had an army of volunteers. We had somewhere around
500 volunteers who built the antennas and put
them up, who built the stations, got the tents
up, got the generators going, kept them filled
with gas. made sure the teams had food to eat
and any of the creature comforts that they needed.
And without those volunteers, we wouldn't have
had an event at all. It would have been the 10
guys on the organizing committee sitting around
wondering how the heck we were going to build
59 stations in a couple of days and then take
them all down. But these volunteers really made
it work. And in Germany, they have a similarly
large group. They still need more volunteers.
They may even accept volunteers from overseas
who show up and help out, come a few days early,
help put some stuff together and install some
antennas and hang around to make sure that the
operators are well taken care of. But what happened
in Boston was that there were some friendships
that I'm aware of that were formed among the
local setup teams and the antenna builders and
the competitors. And these guys are now Facebook
friends, and they're corresponding all the time,
sending Christmas cards, and still remaining
in touch. So I think one part of amateur radio
is supposed to be about international goodwill.
I think the youth teams are going to get a very
heavy dose of that, as well as everybody else,
by spending a week with some of the best operators
on the planet and hanging out with all the generous
volunteers who are giving their time to make
it all happen and come together. All right, give
us a call 8 1 2 6 3 8 4 2 6 1 or send us a tweet
at ham talk live if you have questions about
WRTC and specifically WRTC 2018 which will be
coming up in July Let me check the tweets here.
Okay now We mentioned that you won the first
competition and that you're going to be competing
here in July as well. So, do you have any secret
plans here that you're gonna put in force here?
Do you have something to deal with sunspots?
Well, I guess my big secret is that I'm actually
not trying to win My operating partner is gonna
hate me for saying this but I really want to
come in second and the reason for that is back
in 1990 My operating partner at the time John
K1 AR and I were fortunate enough to win the
gold medal and So I have a gold medal hanging
in the shack in Brazil in 2000 2006 N2NT and
I took the bronze medal so I've got a bronze
and I've got a gold but there's this big hole
where there should be a silver medal so we're
kind of playing for second and we'll see how
that works out but you know this the fact is
there's really no secrets in this game of radio
sport The success and the skill development comes
from just putting in the hours and putting in
the practice and getting on the air a lot. You
learn techniques even with a small, especially
with a small station, you learn how to break
through a pile up on a DX station by shifting
your frequency a little bit and timing your calls.
You learn how to do tail -ending on phone. You
learn which bands are open to major population
areas at which times. and try to be on the best
ones at the best time and you develop a sense
for whether you're on the right band or whether
you should change bands and there's really no
secrets to it. I don't have bigger ears or more
flexible fingers or a better speaking voice than
any of the other guys who are going to be competing
and neither do they. It's just what's between
our ears that is the skills that we've developed
over many many years of doing this and Hopefully
that'll make the difference. Obviously we're
all going to be running 100 watts with identical
antennas, flat ground, all in the same part of
Germany. So there's no other advantages available.
It's just staying awake for 24 hours and alert,
being on the right pan at the right time and
making contacts as fast as you can and as efficiently
as you can without wasting any time. And whoever
does that with the fewest mistakes is going to
walk away with the medal. All right, well there
you heard it there are no secrets here So good
luck to you and all the other competitors and
We look forward to hearing more about this as
time goes on Remind everybody of a few things
First off, I actually did do an article for the
National Contest Journal, which will be coming
up in the next issue about the youth teams. So
you'll be able to read up on them a little bit
more. And just also finished some stuff for Newsline
that's coming out in the morning. So there'll
be a little bit of WRTC coverage starting there
and coming up. more as the time gets closer.
And again, the committee over in Germany are
still looking for donations and for volunteers.
And give us that website again. Sure, it's wrtc2018
.de. And that'll take you right to it. There's
all sorts of stuff. There's press releases and
You'll want to bookmark that if you want to get
on in July and find out what kind of award you
might be able to qualify for by working all the
stations. And you'll find out what the call signs
they'll all be using. You won't know which team
is which. You'll just know that it's a WRTC team.
Okay, very good. And again, if you want a good
read, Jim George, the book is Contact Sport.
It's available on Amazon as well as some other
places. So you can check that out from the 2014
WRTC in Boston. There's also a video in case
people haven't seen that. If you look for a WRTC
2014 video, there's a terrific video that was
done by James Brooks, 9v1 YC. very professionally
done. It runs almost an hour, but it goes very
quickly and even my non -ham friends have said
it's pretty good. So I'd strongly encourage anyone
listening to take a look at that. It's on Vimeo
and lots of other places. I think it's on YouTube
now even. Okay. So look for it on Vimeo and possibly
YouTube. Okay. Very good. Anything else we need
to throw in here, Doug? We've got just under
a minute here. Well, I think that pretty well
covers it. Looking forward to maybe seeing some
of you guys at the Dayton Hamvention coming up
in a few months. I'll be chairing the contest
forum there. We have some pretty good speakers
lined up. And of course, we'll see you on the
air in July from some anonymous call sign in
Germany. And like I said, hoping to get myself
a silver medal out of it this time. OK, now you've
got like 30 seconds. You've got the advantage
here. Any trash talk you want to do about your,
you know, your, your skills here? Well, those
young kids, uh, MJ and KL9A, you know, you know
what they say? Uh, uh, age, old age and treachery
trumps, uh, uh, youth and enthusiasm every time.
So they better watch out. Well, there you have
it. Thank you, Doug. Uh, that is a wrap. for
this week's edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks to
Doug Grant, K1DG, and everyone out there in cyberspace
for listening tonight and I invite you back next
Thursday night at 9 p .m. Eastern Time. Jerry
Buxton, N0JY, the vice president of AMSAT in
charge of engineering will be here and he's going
to talk about building satellites and the Fox
1D launch, so which is coming up here in a couple
hours, I believe. So we'll be talking about that.
So for a list of all of our upcoming guests,
just go to HamTalkLive .com and click on the
schedule link. So for now, this is Neil Rapp,
WB9VPG, saying seven three, seven five, and may
the good DX be yours. Thanks for watching. 73,
and good luck from HamTalk Live.