WINDHAM, NH Issued July 1, 2014…WRTC 2014, Inc., host of the 2014 World Radiosport Team Championship competition, announced today that there will be a live scoreboard for tracking the team standings during the event July 12-13, 2014. The Live Scoreboard will be directly accessible on the web at http://sb.wrtc2014.org or from a link on the WRTC2014 web site (wrtc2014.org).
The scoreboard uses an innovative data collection method developed by Dave Pascoe KM3T and Bob Raymond WA1Z. Each WRTC2014 team will be using networked computers to log the contest. The score collection system will “sniff” the network traffic to obtain the latest score and QSO breakdown information. This data will be transmitted by cellular modem every 5 minutes back to the score processing web site. Previous WRTC events used manual score submissions on an hourly basis. This will be the first to use automation to present scores in near real-time.
The web site will show the scores of all teams ordered by score. Clicking on a team will reveal the team’s band breakdown, hourly rate sheet, and position for each hour of the contest. A leader board page will list the top 5 teams by CW contacts, SSB contacts, multipliers, and points per QSO.
Another innovation is the ability to select multiple teams and compare their scores on a graph vs time. This will reveal how the fortunes of teams change over the 24 hours as they follow their various strategies for building their score.
“We have spent a lot of time confirming the cell signal levels for all sites and are confident that we will have real-time scoring from all 59 teams,” said WRTC2014 Director Dave Pascoe, KM3T. “Bob Raymond has done a great job on the scoreboard web site design and we expect it will be very exciting for friends and family, as well as for hams worldwide, to follow the competitors as they move through the 24 hours.”
Teams will be shown by the calls of the team members rather than their over-the-air callsign. This is done to maintain fairness by keeping the team identity behind each callsign a secret. The teams are not allowed to identify themselves over the air except by their competition callsign.
The site uses responsive design principles to provide maximum usability on desktop, tablet, and mobile platforms.
The scoreboard site is live before the contest for testing purposes. All scores will be reset to zero before the contest begins at 1200 UTC on July 12, 2014.
About WRTC2014
The World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) is held every four years and consists of 50+ two-person teams of amateur radio operators from around the world competing in a test of operating skill. Unlike most on-the-air competitions, all stations are required to use identical antennas from the same geographic region, eliminating all variables except operating ability. Previous WRTCs have been held in Seattle (1990), San Francisco (1996), Slovenia (2000), Finland (2002), Brazil (2006), and Russia (2010). More information is available at www.wrtc2014.org or contact WRTC Chairman Doug Grant, K1DG, via e-mail at k1dg@wrtc2014.org.