2025 ARRL DX SSB - HC8M¶
It would be unfair to say we were just six operators when, in reality, Mr. Murphy joined us the moment we landed in Galápagos for this new contest expedition.
The Operation¶
- Callsign: HC8M
- Category: Multi-Two, High Power
- QTH: Galápagos Islands (South America)
- Operating time: 48 hours
- Operators: HC8M, K1LZ, LU5DX, LU5HM, LU8EOT, LU9ESD
The Build-Up¶
Martín LU5DX and Manu LU9ESD were the first to arrive on the island and got straight to work assembling a second Spiderbeam, replacing the Hexbeam that had been used in the ARRL DX CW two weeks earlier. We had planned to set up a five-vertical parasitic array for 40 meters. At the time there was only a single elevated vertical on the shack's balcony, which had performed well in CW, but we needed better performance for SSB, where finding a clear spot between 7128 and 7200 is practically impossible.
Fiberglass masts were on their way from the U.S., along with a lot more hardware we needed for the contest. Unfortunately, none of that gear ever made it out of customs, so we had to go with Plan B. The locals told us we could get 20+ meter bamboo poles from a nearby field about 15 minutes away, so we loaded up a truck and went to get them. We picked some that were at least 13 meters tall, had them cut down with machetes, and hauled them back to the QTH — a brutal task, since the road there was meant for horses, not vehicles. I had to stand in the truck bed holding the poles, which left me with a sore back for the rest of the week.
Enter Mr. Murphy¶
When we got back to the station, Don Ángel, our host, told us that some guy named Murphy had arrived and decided to stay despite not being invited. The power had gone out — something that even surprised him, as it hadn't happened in years. But no reason to panic: it was only Tuesday, we still had plenty of time, and the issue would be fixed in a few hours.
Meanwhile, we continued assembling the Spiderbeam, which, I must admit, is a tedious process if you've never built one before. It was finally ready, waiting for the rest of the team to arrive so we could raise it.
The afternoon went by, and the power never came back. The rest of the team arrived, and we swapped the Hexbeam for the freshly built Spiderbeam — one thing off the list. We also had to take down the 26-meter fiber pole supporting the 160 m inverted L for some adjustments and improvements before putting it back up a couple of hours later.
We scouted a spot for the 40 m array and ultimately decided on a four-element setup using a model that had already been tested at HK1NA and was kindly shared with us.
Krassy brought pre-cut radials and vertical cables from Massachusetts, which saved us a lot of time. Our job was just to get the heavy, freshly-cut, water-filled bamboo sticks standing, rig a pulley at the top, and voilà. After an entire afternoon soaked to the bone under torrential rain, the four bamboo verticals were up and tuned.
We briefly tested the array against the single vertical — but then, once again, the power went out, for the third day in a row, now becoming our biggest concern. Apparently there was an issue with power generation, and the government had started implementing scheduled outages of six to eight hours due to demand exceeding supply. We needed a contingency plan.
Edgar and Don Ángel went around the island searching for generators, as we couldn't even power up the rigs for testing. By Thursday they had found three small generators — one for each station and another for the fridge and kitchen.
Gremlins in the Shack¶
Once we started wiring everything up in the shack, nothing seemed to work. The weirdest issues: connectors that looked fine but weren't, an Antenna Genius that refused to switch, Flex radios that wouldn't connect, and so on. In the end, a big part of the problem was the low-quality, unshielded network cable we had bought on the island. Adding ferrites and toroids helped, but we still kept running into similar issues. We eventually ditched the Antenna Genius and went back to the good old reliable barrel connectors, hooking antennas and filters directly to the rigs.
When we finally tested the vertical array's performance, we found very little difference from the single vertical. So, once again, under Thursday's torrential downpour, we tore it all down and rebuilt it as a four-element inverted-V array. We played around with element spacing until we got a good match. We also took down the 80 m vertical with elevated radials to retune it for the SSB segment and put it back up.
With all automation gone, everything seemed to work as planned — at least the traditional way.
The Contest¶
Martín LU5DX started the contest on 15 m while Manu LU9ESD kicked off on 10 m. Both had a rough start due to the insane pileups, with 356 QSOs on 10 m and 333 on 15 m during the first hour (including dupes).
Propagation was weird for us. We could hear and see hundreds of stations filling up the bands, but when NA and EU had solid conditions we were left out in the cold, just waiting for things to shift in our favor.
I haven't checked the stats yet, but I'm sure we lost about two hours of operating time in small intervals when things mysteriously stopped working. Even the Spiderbeam's SWR suddenly spiked for no reason, driving us crazy swapping cables, jumpers, and filters — only for everything to start working again on its own. In fact, on Saturday almost at midnight, of course under the rain and with a headlamp, we took one of them down from the 15-meter telescopic mast. A few fine adjustments and back up it went.
One more stop came when we were hit with an S9+ noise level that wiped out EVERYTHING. It took us half an hour to figure out that someone in the house had turned on a faulty lamp, hidden in an area we hadn't even thought to check.
We could go on for hours telling all the crazy (and not-so-crazy) things that happened, but let's wrap it up.
Station Setup¶
Antennas¶
- 160 m: Inverted L with 4 elevated radials
- 80 m: 1/4-wave vertical with 4 elevated radials
- 40 m: 4-element inverted-V array + 1/4-wave vertical with 4 elevated radials
- 20 / 15 / 10 m: Two Spiderbeams
Radios and amplifiers¶
- R1: Flex 8600 + PGXL
- R2: Elecraft K4 + Burst 2000A
Without meaning to, this turned into a full-fledged contest expedition. All wire antennas — not a single piece of aluminum. The 40 m array was held up by bamboo poles, powered by generators, and without any comforts: no air conditioning, 85% humidity permanently inside the shack and bedrooms.
Results¶
| Band | QSOs | Mults |
|---|---|---|
| 160m | 54 | 30 |
| 80m | 444 | 51 |
| 40m | 1,015 | 59 |
| 20m | 2,065 | 60 |
| 15m | 2,100 | 61 |
| 10m | 3,253 | 61 |
| Total | 8,931 | 322 |
Final score: 8,619,618
Notable stats¶
- Best 60-minute rate: 665/hr (00:00–00:59 UTC, day 1)
- Best 30-minute rate: 686/hr
- Best 10-minute rate: 708/hr
- Gross QSOs: 9,206 — Dupes: 275 — Net QSOs: 8,931
- Unique callsigns worked: 5,075
- North American coverage: 99.9% of QSOs were with NA stations
Hourly QSO rate¶
Hour-by-hour breakdown (combined, both radios)
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000 0 0 0 0 320 345 665 665 7.4
0100 0 0 0 279 244 34 557 1222 13.7
0200 0 0 83 236 18 0 337 1559 17.5
0300 0 0 128 195 0 0 323 1882 21.1
0400 0 106 31 209 0 0 346 2228 24.9
0500 0 52 69 138 0 0 259 2487 27.8
0600 41 35 39 6 0 0 121 2608 29.2
0700 4 43 42 0 0 0 89 2697 30.2
0800 2 19 13 5 0 0 39 2736 30.6
0900 2 12 33 0 0 0 47 2783 31.2
1000 0 44 38 0 0 0 82 2865 32.1
1100 1 54 59 0 0 0 114 2979 33.4
1200 0 1 11 19 0 10 41 3020 33.8
1300 0 0 0 0 24 138 162 3182 35.6
1400 0 0 0 0 80 106 186 3368 37.7
1500 0 0 0 0 90 162 252 3620 40.5
1600 0 0 0 0 30 149 179 3799 42.5
1700 0 0 0 0 39 146 185 3984 44.6
1800 0 0 0 0 25 197 222 4206 47.1
1900 0 0 0 0 83 199 282 4488 50.3
2000 0 0 0 0 100 213 313 4801 53.8
2100 0 0 0 0 108 184 292 5093 57.0
2200 0 0 0 0 124 245 369 5462 61.2
2300 0 0 0 0 103 164 267 5729 64.1
0000 0 0 0 131 8 127 266 5995 67.1
0100 0 0 60 178 0 0 238 6233 69.8
0200 0 0 38 150 0 0 188 6421 71.9
0300 0 5 2 76 0 0 83 6504 72.8
0400 0 0 52 142 0 0 194 6698 75.0
0500 0 5 72 62 0 0 139 6837 76.6
0600 1 23 65 34 0 0 123 6960 77.9
0700 0 0 46 6 0 0 52 7012 78.5
0800 2 6 12 1 0 0 21 7033 78.7
0900 0 12 20 0 0 0 32 7065 79.1
1000 1 20 35 0 0 0 56 7121 79.7
1100 0 7 47 5 0 0 59 7180 80.4
1200 0 0 20 27 1 0 48 7228 80.9
1300 0 0 0 61 0 0 61 7289 81.6
1400 0 0 0 29 49 9 87 7376 82.6
1500 0 0 0 0 42 70 112 7488 83.8
1600 0 0 0 0 20 61 81 7569 84.7
1700 0 0 0 0 32 55 87 7656 85.7
1800 0 0 0 0 20 101 121 7777 87.1
1900 0 0 0 0 66 118 184 7961 89.1
2000 0 0 0 0 89 148 237 8198 91.8
2100 0 0 0 0 101 133 234 8432 94.4
2200 0 0 0 0 114 98 212 8644 96.8
2300 0 0 0 76 170 41 287 8931 100.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 54 444 1015 2065 2100 3253 8931
Worked on all 6 bands¶
K9CT, K3JO, K3LR, K5PAR, W8MJ, N2AA, W1GD, K5ZD, WZ5M, K5TR, W1WEF, AD5A, W4RM, K1TTT, AA1K, N4RV, N2IC, NA8V, N1UR, K4OV, W3FOX, K1LZ, KC9LA, K0SIX, N5ZO, N6AA, NO6M, WB6JJJ, K8ROX, N0GC, N5REL, WA3EKL, NF1O.
Closing Thoughts¶
This project among friends is just getting started.
The station will take shape in the coming months, and we're confident it will once again be as competitive as it was in the '80s and '90s, carrying on the legacy of the legendary HC8N, which just about everyone has worked at some point if you're a contester.
Being part of this project is both an honor and a huge responsibility, and we are beyond happy with the results we achieved under the conditions we faced.
We had a fantastic week, with Krassy K1LZ and Ramón LU5HM as our star guests, forming a dream team filled with laughter, hugs, and emotions — part of a project that's only beginning and will make some real noise in the future.
A final note: there are still TOP stations, with well-known operators, who keep hiding on the scoreboard — even those winning their categories. Some only show up when the situation is in their favor or after nearly a full day of contesting. Come on, guys! Isn't online competition more fun and motivating? Everyone who doesn't post their scores is still watching their competitors. Let's make this better — cleaner and more transparent. Don't just think about yourselves; plenty of people follow the scoreboard and get motivated by the competition. There's nothing to hide!
See you next time!
Gallery¶
73, HC8M Team