World Radiosport Team Championship 2018 (WRTC 2018) organizers have picked the Jessen/Wittenberg area near Berlin, Germany, to stage the international Amateur Radio competition. On August 15, the WRTC 2018 Organizing Committee met in Jessen for a workshop, and the town’s mayor, Michael Jahn, expressed his pleasure that his community was picked to host the “Olympic games of Amateur Radio.”

Organizing the project was the main focus of the August 15 meeting. Treasurer Wolfhard Goldschmidt, DL9ZWG, reported a sound fiscal start, mainly due to numerous donations already received from German radio amateurs. Committee Chair Christian Janssen, DL1MGB, demonstrated the project management tool that WRTC 2018 will use and outlined the project schedule. Michael Hoeding, DL6MHW, will handle public relations, while Ben Buettner, DL6RAI, will oversee IT issues.

An important discussion topic concerned the 60 or more sites that will be needed to mount WRTC 2018. With the support of radio amateurs in Saxony and Brandenburg, Organizing Committee member Andreas Winter, DK4WA, has mapped out some 80 promising sites, with close attention being paid to environmental concerns. Winter will assume regional responsibility for all WRTC 2018 activities in the Jessen/Wittenberg area.

The WRTC 2018 Organizing Committee is still fine-tuning operating rules and guidelines for the event. Uwe Koennecker, DL8OBF, will prepare a draft of the rules for WRTC 2018 within the next few weeks. The WRTC Organizing Committee will meet again next March.

“It’s all about securing sites that are as identical as possible from a technical and radio standpoint and recruiting volunteers for the construction of stations and antennas, ” the WRTC 2018 website noted. “And it’s also naturally about coming up with the necessary finances and sponsors for such a competition, which might be compared to auto racing in terms of its sophisticated mix of technical knowhow and individual skill.

World Radiosport Team Championships are typically held every 4 years. The events feature some 60 two-operator teams from around the world in an on-the-air competition. WRTCs are held in conjunction with the IARU HF World Championship, which takes place each July.

Competitors operate with identical power and antennas from sites in the same geographical region, in an effort to eliminate all variables except operator skill. Potential competitors will be attempting to qualify this year and next on the basis of their scores in 32 operating events.