It’s unofficial at this point, but the US K1A team of Daniel Craig, N6MJ, and Chris Hurlbut, KL9A, appears to have taken the gold medal at the World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC-2014) competition in New England. The top team never seemed in doubt; Craig and Hurlbut led the pack of 59 competing teams literally from the start, managing to work up an insurmountable lead of more than 7.5 million points (4631 contacts and 435 multipliers), subject to log checking. Craig, 33, of Rancho Cucamonga, California, comes from a ham radio family and got his license when he was just 8 years old. Hurlbut, 31, of Bozeman, Montana, became a ham when he was 10 and was contesting 4 years later. 

“There’s a pretty good margin between them and the next pack,” said WRTC-2014 Co-Chair Doug Grant, K1DG, in a brief webcast right after the contest concluded at 1200 UTC.

What is in doubt at this point are the second, third, and fourth-place finishers. “We’re now looking at a photo finish,” Grant said.

Because of “one little bug” in the online live scoreboard, Grant explained, some teams’ multiplier counts were not reported — only contact totals. So what the online scoreboard is currently reporting may not turn out to be the official finish. Grant said the W1Z team of Kevin Stockton, N5DX, and Steve London, N2IC, that now appears to be in second place with a score of just over 7 million points could be nudged out by what Grant called “the mystery team” of Fred Kleber, K9VV, and John Sluymer, VE3EJ, operating as N1M and now showing on the online scoreboard in 56th place. VE3EJ is a past WRTC gold medal winner.

“We don’t know their multipliers, so we don’t know their score,” Grant explained. The N1M logged 4599 contacts, the second-highest QSO total for the moment, Grant said. “So, it’s very likely that if they have a good multiplier total, they’re going to be on the medal stand,” he speculated.

Appearing in third place right now is the Slovak team of Rastislav Hrnko, OM3BH, and Jozef Lang, OM3GI, who operated as W1L. Their unofficial tally was 6.984 million points.

CW was far and away the mode generating the most contacts for WRTC-2014 competitors. Contest activity overall was considered to be extremely high.

“We had a terrific contest,” Grant said. “It’s not over yet. We still have the log checking to do.”

Grant urged IARU HF Championship participants to submit their electronic logs as soon as possible, to aid with log checking. Anyone turning in logs within 6 hours of the event’s close will be considered an “Assistant Judge.” He said later this morning WRTC-2014 will post “the preliminary scores” on the online scoreboard on the scoreboard “and log checking will begin.”

“It’s extremely important that you send in your logs,” Grant said.

The gold, silver, and bronze medals will be presented July 14 at an awards ceremony that gets underway at 2300 UTC (7 PM EDT).