The World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) is a radio contest for amateurs. The World Radiosport Team Championship is an invitation-only competition in which the best contesters in the world compete against each other with the stations that are in the same geographic location of the world and have similar operating restrictions and antennas. Each event of the World Radiosport Team Championship is organized by a reputable committee of worldwide renowned contesters. WRTC itself is the closest event to world championships in the contesting sport.
The debut World Radiosport Team Championship was held in 1990 in Seattle, Washington and was scheduled to agree with the Goodwill Games held that year also in Seattle. Teams featuring two contestants each took part in IARU HF World Championship contest, an international operating event which includes both CW and phone operations. The team to accumulate the highest score in the competition was declared the WRTC winner.
While the Radiosport team Championship rules are more restrictive than the IARU contest, the stations were not in equally advantageous spots, and some received more favorable call signs than other teams. Twenty two teams of two participants each represented the United States, Canada, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Italy, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Spain and Yugoslavia. For a few competitors this trip was the first move to a country outside the Soviet Bloc. All the three first places were awarded to the teams of the United States.
The second World Radiosport Team Championship event took place in the San Francisco, California in summer, 1996, and was controlled by the Contest Club of the Northern California. The main innovation at 1996 WRTC was the assignment of the special event call signs to every competitive station. This helped prevent further stations in the contest from identifying their friends, and it also made certain that all the stations had evenly call signs that took roughly the same period of time to send in Morse code or to speak phonetically. Fifty two teams of two competitors each represented twenty four nations. Just as well as at the latest event, all the winning places went to the teams from the United States.
The 2000 World Radiosport Team Championship was held in the European country of Slovenia. WRTC 2000 was the first event where all stations featured antennas of the same manufacture and were installed at the equal heights above the ground. Fifty three teams of two competitors each represented twenty five countries. The United States teams won the first and the third places while the second place went to the team from Russia.
The 2002 World Radiosport Team Championship took place in Helsinki, Finland. A key innovation this year was almost-real-time scoreboards publish on the web site during the course of event. The scores were posted during the contest on a web site which listed merely the call signs of the competitors at each site with no special-event call signs on the air. Fifty two teams of two contestants each represented twenty eight nations. First place was awarded to the U.S. team, second place went to the team of Russia, and third place was won by the German team.
The nearest WRTC event was scheduled for July, 2006 to be held in Florianopolis, Brazil.