2006 Florianópolis, Brazil

WRTC 2006 Logo

WRTC 2006 was held in Florianópolis, Brazil, and introduced a sophisticated qualification scoring system for potential competitors. The world was divided into 14 qualifying regions with the top qualifiers in each region being invited to form a team. To encourage participation of ladies and young radio amateurs, there were two special selection teams for them. 47 teams were selected for the event, but only 46 actually participated. Brazilian airline Varig declared bankruptcy on June 26, causing severe travel difficulties for many teams traveling to Florianópolis the following week, and the Czech team was unable to make other travel arrangements in time.

Teams were provided with larger antennas and 700 watt amplifiers in 2006, to help compensate for the greater distance from Brazil to the main centers of contesting activity in Europe and North America. Despite taking place during the solar minimum, the contest coincided with a short spike in conditions on the HF bands allowing high scores.

After winning three WRTCs in a row, Jeff Steinman, N5TJ and Dan Street, K1TO did not compete in the 2006 event. First place went to John Sluymer VE3EJ and James Roberts VE7ZO of Canada, the first time a team from outside the United States had won the WRTC competition. Dan Craig N6MJ and Dave Mueller N2NL of the United States achieved second place, and third place went to Doug Grant, K1DG and Andy Blank, N2NT of the United States. Ranko Boca, YT6A (now 4O3A) and Djurica Maletin, YT6T of Montenegro had been in third place in preliminary results, but after a scoring adjudication that removed “unique” contacts from WRTC logs, were rescored into eleventh place.

The Brazilian organizers also created a demonstration category of Multi-National Multi-Single (MN MS) Teams that served as a booster for the Radio hobby in Brazil, at the same time developing international friendship and contesting experience between the participants.

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