As you will know if you watched the presentation by the WRTC committee to NARC just before Christmas, the World Radiosport Team Championship – a kind of 4 yearly Olympic Games for amateur radio – is coming to the UK next year. And not only is it coming to the UK, but many of the 50 competing radio stations are going to be here in Norfolk!!
This feels like something NARC should really get involved in as a truly once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of this International ham radio event on our doorstep. Already several of our club members are involved on the UK organising committee and many members expressed enthusiasm for the club to be involved.
One of the most significant and visible ways in which we can support this event is to sponsor one of the stations which can be named NARC or similar and this is what the NARC committee felt we should do, but at £1200 it is something we need to do with the blessing of the club membership and we now need to act as over half of the stations/tents have been sponsored!
Our committee, including the treasurer, considers this is something NARC should and can afford to sponsor, but we feel we should also give members the chance to individually support it by offering personal sponsorships of our station at two levels, with permanent recognition in the form of a role of honour which will be printed on a proper mounted display which will be on the station tent and also covered in our publicity etc. The intention is for a significant part of our sponsorship to WRTC 26 to come from individual donations and the club will make up the balance.
There is now some urgency because there are only 50 stations/tents to sponsor and over half have already been sponsored, so our plan is to commit to a NARC station sponsorship to secure our tent now, and then start accepting individual sponsorships from members soon. The response at the WRTC meeting was very positive and unanimous from what we could see and so we hope this is acceptable by all members, but we are a democratic club and we would ask anyone who feels that NARC should not sponsor a station or have any other constructive suggestions or concerns to come forward as soon as possible and by the latest Sunday February 16th.
David G7URP – on behalf of NARC
To find out more, the WRTC UK website is here: www.wrtc2026.org
And the video recording of our WRTC meeting can be seen here: youtube.com/watch?v=2dgXr6vrWcY
