2025 CQ WPX SSB - HC8M¶
⚠️ Long-text warning.
Someone who knows me way too well told me yesterday: "This is exactly your kind of thing — sitting in a chair and just operating isn't your style."
And yeah, they nailed it. I'm all about the improvised, the unplanned. I don't like over-scheduling stuff; I love the expedition style. The only reason I'm not going on more expeditions is budget and time — but believe me, I would if I could.
Sure, operating from the biggest, fanciest stations in the world is amazing. Sitting in front of all that gear and feeling like the band king is cool… sometimes. But I also really love the other side of the coin: the raw, rustic version.
The Operation¶
- Callsign: HC8M
- Operator: LU9ESD
- Category: Single-Op All Band, High Power (SO2R)
- QTH: Galápagos (South America)
- Operating time: 35:58 hours
Why Come Back¶
I had already been in Galápagos less than a month earlier for ARRL DX SSB, and if you've read my previous stories you know what we went through to get antennas up in those conditions. When that one wrapped up, the team suggested I come back and try SOAB for WPX SSB. Who was I to say no?
Of course, I knew what was coming. Since this project started, the station had only been used in two ARRLs, so we had no idea how it would hold up in WPX.
Let's face it — this is a field station, almost a TB-Wires setup… or maybe not even "almost." It's what we could build: no "real" antennas, just two fiberglass masts for 80/160 and two aluminum masts holding up a pair of Spiderbeams. And those Spiderbeams? They're just wire tribanders sitting around 12 meters high. The rest of the setup? Bamboo poles. At this point, my favorites.
When I accepted the challenge, one of the first things on my mind was to build another wire Yagi for 40 m pointed at EU, add a Beverage for RX, and improve the array we'd set up for NA, among other tweaks.
Pre-Contest: Outside Work¶
I arrived in Galápagos the Saturday before the contest and immediately started thinking: what do I tackle first? What can wait? The plan was clear — work outside during the day, do shack stuff after sundown.
First step: troubleshoot problems that had popped up while we were away. Apparently some cows got into the area with the 160 and 80 fiber poles. Luckily nothing snapped, but it needed attention.
Before I left the last time, I had taken down the dipoles from each bamboo mast we used for the NA array, so I put them back up. I also asked David — our host's son — to help move the still-heavy bamboo poles and space them out properly, using modeling from my buddy Eze LU1FP. Once the poles were in place, I didn't need David's help anymore. The pulleys at the top of each mast made it a solo operation, so David could go back to his own stuff while I kept stretching wires and tying off dipoles.
Once the NA array was back, I started on the next project: a four-element array for Europe. That week, some long-awaited 12 m Spiderbeam fiber poles had arrived — meant for the NA array, but they didn't make it in time for ARRL. I assembled them and added a small pulley on top for easier cable work.
By Monday, that part was rolling.
Pre-Contest: Inside Work¶
At night, I was setting up the shack — completely new territory for me.
Going against my instincts, my previous experiences, and everything I believe in, I decided to give the Flex Radio ecosystem one more shot — and go all in: SO2R with one 6600, one PGXL amp, a TGXL tuner, and everything hooked into an Antenna Genius and a full set of HP filters from 4O3A.
When I started testing this tech jungle, nothing worked. PTTs were stuck or bouncing; the Antenna Genius, PGXL, and TGXL kept dropping from the network. Total chaos.
In this setup, PTT goes over LAN. If LAN dies, you're toast. The root issue? RFI via Ethernet cables. None of the patch cords we were using in the shack were shielded. We tried finding some on the island — no luck. Edgar K2IN/HC8M pulled off a miracle and sourced top-notch STP shielded patch cords from the mainland in record time. We just had to pray they arrived from Quito in time — and thankfully, they did.
Most issues cleared up… except for the USB footswitches. Using two of them meant each had to connect to the PC and control its own slice via SmartCAT. These are just USB-to-RS232 interfaces, and one of them was way more sensitive to RF than the other. That would come back to bite me later.
Building the EU 40 m Array¶
The new 40 m EU wire Yagi was almost ready. On Monday — while it rained non-stop — I cut cables to the right lengths, following Milen LZ5DB's gain-optimized model. Found a decent spot to put it up; the only one, actually, was in a cow pasture. So it'd be temporary, and the masts would have to come down after the contest.
When David returned Tuesday, I had him help me put up the Spiderbeam masts. We raised them to the second-last segment (the last is too thin for any kind of force). They're meant for verticals, not for holding up wire arrays — and sure enough, when I hoisted the radiating element with balun and coax, the mast snapped clean in half.
By that point we'd wasted most of the day placing 4 masts among the trees and threading guy lines between them. We needed Plan B: blessed bamboo sticks. We had two big sticks left from the last trip but had to grab two more from a nearby farm.
That same day, I prepped the biggest one to hold the driven element. The next morning we went looking for two more — long enough that even at 11 meters they'd still be thick enough not to fold under the weight. This was definitely my mistake; I should've used bamboo from the start instead of wrecking fiberglass masts by asking them to do something they were never meant to do.
That day, under a torrential downpour and with plenty of sweat equity, we swapped out the broken masts for bamboo. Fresh-cut bamboo is heavy as hell — completely waterlogged. David's help stopped there; after that I kept working solo thanks to the pulleys already in place. After another soaking and lots of wrestling dipole branches through the trees, the array was finally up — symmetrical and perfect with a 120-degree spread.
Before installing the parasitic elements I had to measure the real Vf of the cable at that height and in that terrain. Once the dipole resonated at 6990, I trimmed the parasitics to hit X=0 and R=48 on 7175. No extra tuning needed.
That night I tested it against the vertical and got the expected 10 dB difference — bam! Second Bamboo Array online and getting beautiful reports from Europe.
Meanwhile, I kept fine-tuning the shack. Unlike in ARRL, this time I had a triplexer, plus high-power filters going to the Radio A output and a low-power ICE filter for Radio B. That meant I had two antennas available for diversity from 40 to 10 meters.
With the EU array done, the outside work was mostly wrapped up. Inside, I kept experimenting with this totally foreign Flex SO2R setup.
Mr. Murphy and Mother Nature¶
As I said in the ARRL write-up, Mr. Murphy was our VIP guest for the whole contest — and because we rushed things and didn't have proper materials last time, everything that could go wrong, did. So this time I took the time to test every jumper, change some connectors, and eliminate as many failure points as I could.
But just when I thought I'd outsmarted Mr. Murphy, out of nowhere, Mother Nature herself showed up — and she was pissed.
Last time we were here we had a conversation with our host Don Ángel about how rare thunderstorms and lightning are on the islands. He even mentioned there had only been a couple of storms like that in the past three decades. But hey, when I'm around… anything can happen.
On Tuesday evening I thought I heard thunder in the distance. I didn't say anything out loud — figured maybe it was just something else, or maybe I was imagining things. But later that night, in total darkness, those thunderclaps started getting closer, and the lightning flashes lit up the sky with serious intensity.
By Wednesday, as I was wrapping up the EU 40 m array, all hell broke loose. A big, nasty thunderstorm rolled in — the kind that scares the life out of any ham radio operator. Suddenly the wind shifted west and started howling with destructive force, and then came a downpour like I've rarely seen. I even pulled out my phone to record it because I just couldn't believe this was happening to me again. What more could go wrong? Was the little I had about to collapse? Was I going to have to rebuild everything from scratch again? Was I about to lose power like during ARRL?
For the record, the very first thing I asked when I arrived was whether the power had gone out since we left. The answer, of course, was "no"…
The wind was so intense that nothing out there felt safe. Even some of the metal roof sheets over the kitchen flew off. Water started pouring in from everywhere — even through the old shack windows. Thankfully the equipment was on the opposite side.
And there I was, still outside in my rain gear, yelling at the sky and asking what the hell else could possibly go wrong. In moments like that, no matter what you believe in, every human instinctively looks up, talks to the heavens, and begs for mercy. Winds were gusting over 100 km/h, rain was flooding everything, and I was just standing there, waiting to see what would break first.
But almost nothing broke. Almost. The combo of wind and water did make one of the guy stakes on the vertical give way, and the whole thing came down. Luckily, nothing snapped — not a single wire, not a single rope, not even one of the countless cables I had strung all over the place.
Of course, the power did go out. Some poles had come down in the storm and there was no clear estimate on when the grid would be back. No hesitation — I asked David to bring over the diesel generator we had used during ARRL SSB. Luckily, late that same night, the grid came back. The generator was only used for a few hours, just in case, and then it went back into standby.
Raising the Mast Solo¶
The rain stopped. The wind kept blowing all night and well into Thursday. I took advantage of the break to fully extend the Spiderbeam mast sections, clamped everything down, and got it ready to raise again.
Since there was no one around to help that day, I decided to do it solo. I laid the vertical down with its tip facing into the wind, secured the base with a solid metal stake, and thanks to our good friend Pythagoras (and a trusty hypotenuse), I managed to lift the entire mast using just two of the guy ropes. Yeah, 22 meters (72 feet) of mast might look intimidating — but it's completely manageable.
Once it was up, the mast stood tall, fully extended, with the cable pulled tight and resonating perfectly on the SSB portion. One more thing checked off the list.
I still had some daylight left, so I grabbed a 9:1 transformer I had with me and decided to deploy a Beverage toward Europe to help knock down some of the brutal QRN I'd noticed the previous nights. We hadn't experienced this much static during ARRL, but hey — this trip was full of "firsts." I pieced together various wire scraps I had lying around and improvised a Beverage about 130 meters long, meant to be useful on both 80 and 40 meters. Unfortunately I didn't have a termination resistor, but still — better than nothing.
I wrapped up that job right around nightfall. And believe me, this is just a summary of everything that happened along the way. But somehow, against all odds, I hit my goal: finish all fieldwork by Thursday so I could take Friday off and rest. Something I really needed.
Anyone who's read my previous stories knows how much I suffer from heat and especially humidity. And this is one of those places where both hit hard. At least for me, it means ending each day completely wiped out.
Final Tests¶
Yes, the antennas were finally done — but inside the shack there were still a few more things to test and tweak.
I gave the Beverage a try and was pretty surprised at how well it received. But I also realized something kind of annoying: with the Flex setup you can't assign one RX antenna to one receiver and a main antenna to the second receiver independently — not as freely as I'd like, anyway. So, not so much "FLEXibility" in that sense. Still, the BEV worked.
The next tests were mostly about inter-band interaction (spoiler: I didn't find any). I was running a single Flex 6600 with two independent SCUs on different bands in full duplex mode. Sounds crazy, right? But it's one of the most impressive features of this radio — pretty unique, honestly.
Same goes for sharing a single amp and tuner between both bands. Up to that point, everything seemed to be working fine. The only thing left was to hope it all held together through the contest and didn't fall into the usual trap these radios are known for — being a bit flaky under real contest pressure. But hey, I had no choice but to go in with faith and optimism. It HAD to work.
Thursday night I stayed up late doing RF and tone tests, pushing the gear hard without making too many QSOs — just enough to see if something would break. Everything seemed to be behaving, so I went to bed without setting an alarm or planning to get up early.
I really needed to rest as much as my body could take. I didn't sleep that much, but enough — especially since I planned to take a couple of hours off during the first night of the contest and needed to be a little tired to actually fall asleep.
Friday felt endless. I kept testing things, but no QSOs. We didn't want to use the HC8M callsign outside the contest, and I didn't want to go on as HD8CW either — after what happened during ARRL, having to switch calls mid-stream threw me off completely and made me fumble hard.
So I stuck to checking all the antennas again with the analyzer. I fixed the Spiderbeam by the water tank aiming it at Europe, and the one on the shack roof got locked at about 330°, midway between the U.S. and JA/AS. That's where they'd stay for the entire contest — no rotators.
As someone once said: Organic Antenna Field.
Those endless hours were spent scanning bands and trying out Flex's diversity mode — same frequency, two different antennas. Honestly, it's a killer feature for single-band run situations, and yeah — it turned out to be a real game-changer during the contest.
The Contest¶
Planning the operation was super tricky. First, because there are almost no past logs from HC8 in CQ WPX, not even from way back. Second, solar activity was all over the place that week. And third, I'd never operated a worldwide contest from this QTH before. I had a rough plan, sure, but most decisions were going to be made on the fly. Maybe I missed the mark in a few time slots, but I don't think it would've made a huge difference in the end.
When the contest finally kicked off, 10 meters was lit up — especially from the U.S. So I started there, hoping for a fast first hour.
And yeah — 92 QSOs in the first 15 minutes. But the band was open everywhere — Asia, South America. Signals were booming, but that spread slowed things down. I ended up with only 278 QSOs in the first hour, which ended up being the fastest hour of the whole contest anyway.
I stayed on 10 meters for about an hour and a half, then moved down to 15, and another hour and a half later I dropped into 40 m. That's where things got nasty. It was literally impossible to hear anything between 7128 and 7200. Pure chaos. So I set up shop below the U.S. phone band and used a second slice to listen above 7200 for U.S. stations. From HC8 we're not allowed to transmit above 7200 either — but we can do it below 7125. That gave me some room to maneuver.
I spent an hour on 40 m doing two-direction RX and always transmitting with the EU-facing array. Signals were absolutely slamming in from everywhere. I was thrilled to see the Bamboo Array performing that well.
After that, I switched to dual CQ on 80/40 for about two hours and held that run well past European sunrise. The band was cooking.
Later, when 80/40 finally died out, I fired up another slice to monitor 15 meters and was stunned to hear extremely strong signals. And to my surprise… they were Europeans. Working EU on 15 meters between 1 and 3 AM local time on a Saturday? Only possible when you're smack on the equator. This place just never stops surprising me.
Once that freak 15-meter opening ended, I did dual CQ on 20/40 — hitting JA and Asia with ease on 40 while Europeans were absolutely crushing the S-meter on 20 m.
At the 10-hour mark I had planned to take my first 3-hour break. It was hard to stop, though, because the bands were still absolutely on fire.
At 7 AM local time I jumped back into 10 meters — just as expected, it was the diva of the weekend. I had four straight hours of 200+ Qs/hour with Europe. This happened both days, although the second day was slightly slower — probably because of the longer 4-digit exchanges.
The second night I took a longer break — almost 6 hours — and still had 2 more hours of off-time left to take. I figured I'd fit those in later when the rate dropped below 500 points/hour, and that's exactly what I did.
That long break wasn't just strategic — it was necessary. The QRN from a storm overhead was through the roof. I couldn't hear anything on 80, and even on 40 with the Beverage I was struggling big time. The static crashes were brutal.
To sum it up — if I had to describe the propagation in one word, it would be: SPECTACULAR.
I know other parts of the world, like my buddies at K1LZ, had a tough time with high K and A indices… but when you're sitting right on the equator at 0°, the geomagnetic effects are minimal. And the high-band conditions? Honestly, some of the best I've heard in my entire life.
The amount of JA and AS stations I worked, with booming signals across all high bands, was unlike anything I've experienced as a single op. The kind of reception I had here reminded me of the mega-stations I've operated from during previous solar peaks — like HK1NA, where we had giant stacks on every band and sophisticated RX setups.
We all know what this location is capable of. HC8A and HC8N left a legacy here that still holds some records more than 30 years later.
Station Setup¶
Antennas¶
- 80 m: 1/4-wave vertical with 4 elevated radials
- 40 m: 4-element wire Yagi (NA) + 4-element wire Yagi (EU)
- 20 / 15 / 10 m: Spiderbeam fixed NA + Spiderbeam fixed EU
- RX: 130 m Beverage @ 35°
Radios and amplifiers¶
- Flex 6600
- Power Genius XL + Tuner Genius XL (hat off to this combo)
- 4O3A HP band-pass filters + triplexer (Radio A)
- ICE 419 LP band-pass filter (Radio B)
Results¶
| Band | QSOs |
|---|---|
| 160m | — |
| 80m | 95 |
| 40m | 747 |
| 20m | 1,000 |
| 15m | 1,297 |
| 10m | 2,696 |
| Total | 5,835 |
Prefixes: 1,435 — Final score: 28,133,175
Notable stats¶
- Best 60-minute rate: 278/hr (00:00–00:59 UTC, day 1)
- Best 30-minute rate: 320/hr
- Best 10-minute rate: 348/hr
- Gross QSOs: 5,890 — Dupes: 55 — Net QSOs: 5,835
- Unique callsigns worked: 4,404
- Band changes: 991 — Probable 2nd-radio QSOs: 810 (13.9%)
Hourly QSO rate¶
Hour-by-hour breakdown
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000 0 0 0 0 0 278 278 278 4.8
0100 0 0 0 0 107 94 201 479 8.2
0200 0 0 8 0 204 0 212 691 11.8
0300 0 0 128 0 0 0 128 819 14.0
0400 0 39 50 0 0 0 89 908 15.6
0500 0 47 69 0 0 0 116 1024 17.5
0600 0 1 146 0 0 0 147 1171 20.1
0700 0 8 78 0 17 0 103 1274 21.8
0800 0 0 55 61 40 0 156 1430 24.5
0900 0 0 50 78 0 0 128 1558 26.7
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1558 26.7
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1558 26.7
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1558 26.7
1300 0 0 0 0 17 167 184 1742 29.9
1400 0 0 0 0 0 229 229 1971 33.8
1500 0 0 0 0 0 222 222 2193 37.6
1600 0 0 0 0 0 200 200 2393 41.0
1700 0 0 0 0 12 131 143 2536 43.5
1800 0 0 0 0 133 18 151 2687 46.0
1900 0 0 0 0 202 0 202 2889 49.5
2000 0 0 0 0 66 94 160 3049 52.3
2100 0 0 0 3 0 40 43 3092 53.0
2200 0 0 0 122 16 0 138 3230 55.4
2300 0 0 0 149 0 0 149 3379 57.9
0000 0 0 25 89 0 0 114 3493 59.9
0100 0 0 0 81 88 0 169 3662 62.8
0200 0 0 21 14 135 0 170 3832 65.7
0300 0 0 48 0 87 0 135 3967 68.0
0400 0 0 51 87 0 0 138 4105 70.4
0500 0 0 18 93 0 0 111 4216 72.3
0600 0 0 0 135 0 0 135 4351 74.6
0700 0 0 0 63 0 0 63 4414 75.6
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4414 75.6
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4414 75.6
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4414 75.6
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4414 75.6
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4414 75.6
1300 0 0 0 0 0 123 123 4537 77.8
1400 0 0 0 0 0 213 213 4750 81.4
1500 0 0 0 0 27 153 180 4930 84.5
1600 0 0 0 0 44 110 154 5084 87.1
1700 0 0 0 0 1 3 4 5088 87.2
1800 0 0 0 0 41 91 132 5220 89.5
1900 0 0 0 0 49 108 157 5377 92.2
2000 0 0 0 0 4 52 56 5433 93.1
2100 0 0 0 11 7 57 75 5508 94.4
2200 0 0 0 0 0 177 177 5685 97.4
2300 0 0 0 14 0 136 150 5835 100.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 95 747 1000 1297 2696 5835
Reflections¶
And how could I not be thrilled with this result? With these compromise antennas, with a setup that's basically TB-Wires-Plus, without a single stick of aluminum — I was up there battling side by side with monsters like D4C (a.k.a. D4DX) and 8P5A.
Honestly, I never had my expectations that high — especially after what we went through during the ARRL, where we could really feel the lack of high, real antennas. When I found out Emir was going to be operating from D4C, I knew he'd be gunning for the record. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be chasing right behind him.
And when he took his first break… I actually spent a few glorious hours sitting at the top of the scoreboard. Sure, I knew it was temporary — but still, it was like getting a shot of adrenaline right to the soul. It pushed me to go all-in for the rest of the contest. Hard to believe there are still top-tier stations in every category who refuse to show up on the scoreboard. Come on, guys!
This whole experience just proves that this station can be competitive — especially as we grow in terms of height and real antennas.
Personally, this was a deeply enriching experience — living through unforgettable moments, no matter how crazy the circumstances got along the way.
About the shack setup — I'll say it straight: in my opinion, while SO2R with a single radio is a neat trick and technically impressive, when it comes to serious contesting nothing beats two independent radios with external hardware like an MK2R+. You can set everything up to your own liking and not depend on the reliability (or lack thereof) of a single software ecosystem. At least I always had the peace of mind knowing I had another identical radio as a backup.
I don't really like to compare experiences, because every one of them ends up being special in its own way. But without a doubt, this was one of the most meaningful and rewarding adventures in my entire ham radio journey.
I'm beyond grateful to my teammates from the ARRL DX SSB team — thank you for offering me this chance, for motivating me, and for putting up with me on another one of these wild rides. It's another chapter full of valuable lessons that helped me grow, push my own limits, and experience unforgettable places and moments — like finally meeting those famous giant Galápagos tortoises.
Endless thanks to everyone who came looking for me on the bands. Because it wasn't until the very last hour that I finally dropped the "Run, Baby, Run" mentality… and went fishing for a few multipliers. 😄
Congrats to my friend Emir E77777DX for a well-deserved WR from that real radio paradise!
See you in the next one!
Gallery¶
73, Manu LU9ESD / AC1NU