The second weekend of July has an everybody-works-everybody contest: the 24-hour IARU HF World Championship. Not only are “regular” contesters on the bands working each other, but member societies of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) activate headquarters stations which count as multipliers. And to top it all off, there’s a contest-within-a contest, the World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC), made up of 63 M/2 (multi-two) teams on from Italy this year.
The deep origins of this July contest can be traced to a one-off predecessor, the 1976 ARRL Bicentennial Celebration. This 48-hour event was held in late July 1976. It was hugely popular, with 2500 logs submitted – US stations celebrated their history by using as their exchange a number corresponding to the order of their state’s entry into the union. There were no multipliers, but action was livened up by allowing contacts on both voice and another mode (most commonly CW, but also allowed were SSTV and RTTY). US stations were encouraged to use their special bicentennial prefixes.
From 1977 through 1986, the IARU Radiosport Championship continued the lively July contest tradition, settling down on the second weekend in July. Stations operated for up to 36 hours of the 48-hour weekend and ITU zones () were the exchange for all entrants. There were no multipliers, but DX activity
