WQ6X offers further ThoTs on the IARU HF Championship

It is difficult for me to fathom that the once far-off IARU contest is now several days behind
us. 10 days ago, the Solar Flux Index (SFI) soared briefly to 208.  Then, for the IARU weekend,
the SFI was 1/2 that (109), altho allegedly the A&K indices were quite low - tell that to the geomagnetic noise that was a constant weekend backdrop.

The IARU GiG revolves around the UTC timeclock.  The 12:00z (NooN) starting time was perfect for the WRTC competition, unlike the 2o14 WRTC Boston-event which began at 5am local time.  During multi-OP contest weekends, I am often running the 2am to 5am shift, going to bed @12:00z, instead of just starting out.

At 5am on the left coast, 40-meters is open to Asia for another hour or so. Twenty meters is "wandering around" looking for an opening, while the MUF has not climbed high enough to enable
15-meters.  By 14:30z, 40-meters was back to "local" communications while 20-meters was showing inklings of propagation possibilities to EU.

Unusual for a radiosport weekend, my OP-time was shared with a 4-hour Zoom conference. 
Due to the way the various segments of the conference were organized, I found plenty of opportunities to work 20-meters and exploit the 15-meter EU opening.  

A success secret for IARU GiGs is to start on the highest band providing QSO-runs and work our way down as the MUF drops throughout the day or the A/K indexes increase.  For this IARU GiG, 10-meters was a no-show.  

Perusing the 3830Scores submissions,
it would seem that most operators (in the USA at least) shared my experience.

While there is already a contest online scoreboard ([CLICK HERE] to go there), because the WRTC station callsigns are assigned just minutes before the contest starts, the unique one-time callsigns did not figure into that system, altho those callsigns eventually made their way onto our spotting band maps.

Instead, the World Radio League (WRL) maintained a separate leaderboard dedicated to the
50 WRTC stations updated every few minutes as each station added new contacts and multipliers
to their ever-increasing scores.  I was so hyper-focused on operating and the separate online conference that by the time I first checked the leaderboard (some 8-hours into the event), the top
10 contenders had already settled into the top-10 - the only real question was what final place these teams will finally land.

After the IARU event was long over, was determined a picture was published detailing the WRTC callsigns which had been assigned. As you can see, the callsigns all shared an "MB" prefix

In all honesty, while the idea of being one of the 100 competitors sounds intriguing, what is required and involved to make it all happen is way out of my league.  While I certainly possess advanced contesting skills, what is required to operate at the WRTC level, requires commitment, time, money,
and nearly obsessive hyper-focus.  To begin with, just getting radio equipment through custom is only one of many things to resolve even before the operating period commences.

Each team is randomly assigned a callsign and an operating location, which as I understand it were like Field Day tent setups. Additionally, a referee is randomly assigned who validates their setup before the event begins and monitors their operation with audio from both stations split between the Left/Right ears.  After the 12:00z ending, teams have only a short amount of time to reconcile the log before turning it over to the contest committee.

The WRTC event is several days behind us.  Overall, the top 5 teams are I guess no real surprise.
The 2030 event location has yet to be determined.  It will be interesting to find out where that will actually be.

DiD YOU work the 2o26 IARU contest?
How many WRTC "MB" stations are in YOUR Log?