NAQP CW Kicks Off New Year's Qualifying Events For 2014 World Radiosport Team Championship

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted January 3, 2011

Qualifying for the 2014 World Radiosport Team Championship gets off to a fast start in the New Year, as the CW leg of the North American QSO Party comes this weekend, launching a busy schedule of WRTC qualifying in 2011.

For hams in North America, NAQP CW is followed next weekend by NAQP SSB, both of which are worth 800 WRTC qualifying points.

"The addition of the NAQP will be a boost to that fun event," said Julius Fazekas N2WN.

One note for those trying to map out a possible WRTC entry is that the NAQP events are low power only - but that does not mean your scores are reduced by the 0.9 LP adjustment in WRTC scores.

"Indeed the NAQP is a LP-only contest," says WRTC 2014 organizer Dan Street K1TO.

"Scores in the NAQP will *not* be adjusted downward by the 0.9 multiplier. Max score for a Single Op is 800."

The NAQP is one of a group of contests worth 800 points, the lowest amount offered in qualifying for WRTC 2014. They include WAE, All Asian DX, EUHFC, the NA Sprint CW and Oceania DX.

As for NAQP CW, if you were busy right around Christmas, you may have missed the dust up that occurred over a proposed rules change which would have allowed single operators to use wide-band CW decoding technology like CW Skimmer.

After an uproar among contesters, NAQP organizers backed off that change, as the rules will be the same in 2011 as they were in 2009, which many felt were definitive on the use of outside assistance.

"Although the nature of contesting has been one of technological advances over the years that have increased scoring opportunities, it's evident from the postings on this list that the contesting community is not ready to adopt CW Skimmer-like technologies in the single-op category at this time," wrote Bruce Horn WA7BNM.

"For this reason and the fact that the CW NAQP contest will be used as part of the team selection criteria for WRTC 2014 starting in 2011, we've returned the single-op criteria to the pre-2009 definition that prohibits the use of automated tools," Horn added.

The original rule - and the rule that will be used for NAQP in 2011 - reads this way on assistance:

"Access to spotting information obtained directly or indirectly from any source other than the station operator, such as from other stations or automated tools, is prohibited."

What organizers tried to do was add on the exemption for CW Skimmer, code readers and more, if - and only if - all of that was done locally, within the station.

Contest Schedule Filled With WRTC

The North American QSO Party contests are just two of a battery of contests in coming months that will continue the battle for slots in the 2014 WRTC:

January has both NAQP events for North America

February has NA Sprint CW for North America, ARRL DX CW for all

March is jammed with WRTC qualifying events for the entire world, with ARRL DX SSB, Russian DX and CQ WPX SSB - three WRTC events in just four weekends of that month.