2025 CQ WW DX SSB - HD8R¶

⚠️ Long-text warning — about a one-hour read, on average. If you keep going, don't say I didn't warn you. If you already know my style, you know I'll try to bring you along for the whole ride.

One more for the books.

I don't think I've ever seen the bands like this in my life — at least from 40 meters up — which surely helped make participation massive and made it extremely hard, almost impossible, to find a clear spot on any of those bands. To make it worse, I had the misfortune of having to operate with Flex radios again, which let you see the bands in real time. I've seen people up above 29,000 every now and then, but not above 29,300, and much less below 28,300 among the beacons…

The Operation¶

Callsign: HD8R
Operator: LU9ESD
Category: Single-Op All Band, High Power (SO2R)
QTH: Galápagos (South America)
Operating time: 47:25 hours
Club: Araucaria DX Group

How I Ended Up Here¶

Up until about a month and a half ago I didn't know I was going to be here. I had several possibilities, but as the first months of the year went by, different things happened that canceled some of those options until, unexpectedly, the one that finally happened opened up and brought me here.

The idea was that, by the time this contest came, we would have a real station built — with real antennas — to try to be competitive in both SSB and CW. But once again an unexpected personal issue made me go back to Argentina for 45 days, which delayed any possibility of a fast build.

Even if the station wasn't going to be competitive, nobody was going to come operate from here because the guys had committed to operate from LP1H, so they told me: "Hey! You can still go, everything is there just like you left it after WPX SSB," and they were right. In the end most of the stuff was here although — as always — there was a lot to do. The well-known story of the bamboo and the wires deserved a part 2.

Arrival: Damage Assessment¶

After spending a couple of weeks at K1LZ leaving everything ready there in Maine, I came here about 12 days in advance. I only knew the 80 m vertical had fallen, but I didn't have many more details. At some point I thought: "Nice! It'll just be a couple of days of work and the rest will be pure vacation!" … Here we go.

On Tuesday of the week before the contest, when I was arriving at the QTH from the airport, I already noticed from a distance that the 26 m Spiderbeam mast holding the inverted L was missing a piece at the top. Then I saw that the bamboo poles holding the reflector and D1 were also broken at the tips. The Spiderbeam on the upper balcony was leaning, about to fall, because it had a guy rope broken — fortunately I arrived in time.

The 80 m vertical was destroyed, but luckily we had a brand-new backup, so it was just a matter of assembling it and putting it up. It was obvious the cows had gotten back into the antenna field, just like before. They also hooked 2 of the 4 elements of the 40 m NA wire Yagi, with the bad luck that the three support poles broke at the tips. The 40 m EU one was the least damaged — only the driven element lost one of its sides. It didn't look too hard because it had a pulley at the top, but who said that pulley was going to be in the mood to keep working after 7 months in this environment?

I still had the two Spiderbeams to check with the antenna analyzer to know if at least some of my temporary (long-term temporary…) antennas were working or if I was 100% screwed. What a lovely surprise! Only one of the Spiderbeams worked. Out of 6 antennas total, 1 worked. I wasn't totally screwed. Just 85%.

The Weather¶

So far I haven't mentioned what the terrain was like nor the weather. The islanders call this the dry or cold season. Getting off the plane at the airport, right by the sea, I didn't feel either of those. But compared to the scorching heat of March, yeah, there's a big difference.

As you start going up to the highest point of the island where the station is, at about 630 m ASL, the story changes: you enter a very dense fog that gets you wetter than any rain, and it's nothing more than being inside the clouds permanently. That's how the weather was ALL the 15 days I've been here. I only saw the sun one single day — but we'll get there.

You can imagine what it's like to walk in muddy ground that for several weeks has been permanently inside the clouds with a relative humidity of 1,663,818,652%… Good thing that after the first time I learned, and the second time I brought rubber boots and a rain suit that had stayed here. On top of that, let's add wind, with gusts of 40 or 50 km/h, all day long during my whole first week here. Lovely.

Packing for War¶

The weeks before coming we had been gathering an endless amount of things I needed to bring. This time I wasn't going to repeat the mistake of using only one Flex in SO2R mode like I did in WPX, with a terrible result. I was going to use the two of them, with the two receivers for diversity. For that we had to buy mainly a 4O3A 8xAB switch to be able to build the "Super switch," as Ranko calls it — basically an 8×4 to use 8 antennas with 4 radios through 2 Antenna Genius and an OM module.

I also wanted the second Spiderbeam to have its own triplexer and three HP filters that I also had to bring. One extra filter for 40 meters, and both "Bamboo Yagis" to have their own filter. Another computer, cables of every kind, length and color, an MK2R+, more cables, adapters — the ones we always need and the ones we don't — one roll of thin Phillystran for guying my project of raising the balcony Spiderbeam well above the roof to gain about 4 meters and reduce RFI; more cables, even two 200-meter Beverages, transformers, more cables, a roll of RG-6, some more cables, and as if that wasn't enough, I think there were some more cables too.

I showed up with two big suitcases of exactly 23 kg, a carry-on at 16 kg (luckily they didn't weigh it) and a backpack that weighed another 14. And that's without even mentioning a few more cables I brought! And yeah, of course, I didn't use half of it.

At the speed of light, my friend Juanma from hambuy.es saved me in my last-minute search for low-power filters for the second receiver of the Flex radios so I could use a couple of antennas that didn't go through HP filters. Not only did he solve the problem, he sent me two ICE filters so they would arrive in the U.S. exactly two days before I traveled here. Once again, thanks Juanma and hambuy.es for the help!

We weren't done yet: we also had to bring nothing less than an Acom 2000A, but my luggage limit was full, so Edgar K2IN didn't hesitate to offer to come a few days later but early enough to give me a hand with whatever I needed before the contest.

The First Field Day¶

The first thing on arrival was to assess the damage and come up with an action plan. I started with the easiest thing: fixing the driven element of the 40 m EU Yagi. Of course the pulley didn't want to come down, so I had to lower (by myself) that bamboo pole of about 4 inches at the base, still with water inside. And of course the D1 guy ropes were too close, so I had to lower not one but two. The repair was quick, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't put the poles back up by myself. They stayed there until I got some help.

When the sun went down — exactly at 6 PM, like all year here, right on the Equator — I dedicated myself to organizing the shack. First I unpacked the three bags with everything already mentioned and some more cables I forgot to mention. If you're reading this on my Facebook page, you're going to see a table full of stuff — yeah, that was the unpacking, all of that came with me. Did I overdo it with the cables?

Wrong Connectors!¶

First I set up all the HP filters and the triplexer that were here, added the second triplexer to the four triplexers I brought, placed everything around the two Antenna Genius, and added the 8xAB switch I'd just taken out of the box.

When I grabbed the pre-made LMR-400 jumpers I had brought, with the PL connectors already soldered to save time and plug everything fast, I went to the brand-new switch, took off the first of the 24 little caps that cover the connectors, and saw a female N-type connector…

$&)@$@@&#^#+#€{%%]%++#+*]%%%]

Buy another switch right away with the right connectors.
Explain to DXE there was a purchase mistake.
Get them to accept the return after some time.
Ship it express to Edgar's house.
Pray it arrives in time.
Wait almost a week to be able to connect and test everything.

Luckily my native language is Spanish — and on top of that, Argentine Spanish, which I must admit has a variety of curses, insults and colorful language with a force I haven't heard in any other language. A good while of that is liberating and relaxing so you can focus on moving forward.

The "Superswitch"¶

There was a lot to connect, a lot to do. Even things I hadn't found any information about. Without going any further, my friend Ranko 4O3A told me that what I wanted to do wasn't going to be possible, and that he'd never heard of anyone doing it.

Generally both the Flex 8600 and the 6600 are designed to be used as SO2R by themselves, but what if I want diversity on both bands? That's what the "Superswitch" was for: each radio using the two independent receivers on the same band but with different antennas, and having the possibility of using any combination from any radio.

Of course it wasn't easy. Nothing is easy in this world.

The two triplexers by themselves turn the two antennas into 6, so I only had two inputs left to connect 5 more antennas 🙂. Easy — it was in the plan. I tried to guess by propagation which bands and areas would overlap the least. One of the Spiderbeams would be fixed to NA and the other to EU. So 10 m EU and 160 can't possibly coincide. Then everything can coincide at some point, but which ones would do it the least? 80 and 15 NA. This way, and using two manual switches within reach of my hand, I solved the problem. The only thing I had to do was remember to flip the manual switches when I wanted to use some of those inputs on the AG properly labeled on screen.

Amplifiers? Here we have a PGXL with its TGXL — that combo was what gave the least headaches (actually the only thing that didn't give me headaches) during the last WPX SSB. One option was to use the same amp for the two radios, but on the Monday before the contest the Acom that Edgar was bringing would arrive, so I preferred to give the LDMOS a break and use one amp per radio. The Tuner Genius would be used with both amps.

"Spamboo"¶

Night turned into day. Back to the field.

I started building the new 22-meter Spiderbeam mast to replace the one that had fallen. At some point in the day David, our host's son, showed up, and I asked him to put on rubber boots and a raincoat and help me with an errand. I took him through the mud to raise the two poles of the 40 EU. "Done, thanks! I'll take it from here."

He took the chance to tell me we could go get bamboo but not that day, because he was very busy with his field tasks — actually he was here just a few days and only for short moments.

On the way back, splashing water and mud and with visibility of no more than 50 meters because we were always inside the clouds, I glanced at the poor 80 m vertical broken in a couple of pieces, and a little further I saw other poles, some good and some broken. Those were the 12-meter ones I'd tried to use as support for the wire Yagi but, no matter what I did, they didn't hold and broke — of course, they're not meant for that.

But then… wait a minute, I said to myself: there are broken poles I'm not going to use anymore… but yeah, they're also no good to replace the damaged ones of the 40 m NA array.

I went back and stood there, arms crossed, in front of that whole cemetery of fiberglass tubes:

"But CHE — as we say in Argentina — down here these masts are not broken, and they're thick enough…"

And I looked at the broken bamboo poles in the distance.

I grabbed one of the beat-up Spiderbeams and off I went, not without first grabbing a machete.

I first lowered the reflector stick, finished breaking and removing the broken tip of about 2.5 meters, cleaned the edges and protruding bamboo branch leftovers with the machete, and tried to insert the fiberglass pole into the bamboo tip. It went in one meter, then two meters, and it was exactly what I wanted — I mean, what they wanted.

In that act of pole cross-breeding, combining good old Galápagos bamboo with a touch of German engineering from Spiderbeam, we ended up with the legendary "Spamboo"!

I took down both broken poles, disassembled the fiber poles to use only the good sections and of the lengths I needed to reach the same height they had before they broke. I pushed them in nice and tight and the result was great. New pulleys at the tips and up they went with a bit of effort.

I remade the elements based on the model from my friend Milen LZ5DB, and during the day I kept dividing my time between that and other tasks.

Verticals and a Top-Hat¶

The main idea was to leave the 80 and 160 verticals already built on the ground and in position so that when Edgar came we'd only have to put them up. One of those days David showed up again with a couple of his workers and I took the chance to ask for a hand to lower the 160 mast so I could work on it. Another big step forward.

The mast for 160 had lost its last two meters, so after a couple of tips from LZ5DB, I chose to make a three-spoke capacitive top-hat instead of the L. Not only would we gain mechanical strength by having the top-hat act like guy ropes, we'd also have a slight improvement in performance on low angles.

I tuned the elevated radials I had for the inverted L so I wouldn't have to do everything from scratch or have to add radials in a rather uncomfortable place — and on top of that I was short of wire. I wanted to solder the top-hat wires to the radiator but, since I was going to use the same wire that was already well secured to the mast for the inverted L, I had to solder it where it was. I found a long cable to make an extension and I tried to take the soldering iron out there. Even though that Saturday the fog had cleared, it was because of the really strong wind that had picked up.

I had to invent some kind of wind shield, and the best way I found was to stick my arms and head, together with the wires, inside a big suitcase I had here. You'll see a video about it too. Luckily there are no neighbors around, because I can just imagine their faces seeing a guy stuck inside a suitcase in the middle of the field. The unorthodox trick worked again.

Sunday: The "Spamboo" Strikes Back¶

Sunday dawned and from the room I was already hearing loud noises. When I opened the window I saw it kept blowing very hard. From that same window I had a front-row view of the "Spamboo" array. This time the D1 pole was broken in the middle. It was one of the ones I hadn't lowered or modified. I guess it got jealous of the hybrids and wanted to experience what its friends were going through.

That's how my morning started.

After my classic breakfast I went to see if I could use the same method, but when I lowered it, it broke somewhere else. That pole was rotten. Sudden death — discard. Luckily David had told me there were other bamboo poles where they keep the cattle, not as tall but very thick. Exactly. This time the first three sections of the beat-up 80 m vertical came to the rescue. It was probably the strongest one because it ends at about two inches.

It was very hard to move it around by myself; in fact my neck still hurts, so raising it alone was going to be impossible. That one would also stay ready on the ground to go up when the time came.

Beverages¶

The only things left were the two Beverages I wanted to install. For the EU one I used the same starting point as for WPX. This time I had brought 2 rolls of 250 m of wire to make them as long as possible, unlike the short 100 m I had last time.

Up to about 120 m I was able to keep about 1 meter of height, but then I had to cross a fence and go into a paddock where there were actually cows, so I had to raise it using the small trees that are there. There came a point where the ground dropped sharply so I couldn't go on. I looked at the GPS and I was 185 meters from the feedpoint. Not bad.

I just left the wire tied up there, high on a little tree, and went back to get the other wire for the NA Beverage. I had to walk a lot to find the best place. I wanted to go as far as possible from the transmitting antennas, but still be able to deploy about the same length as the EU one, and of course in the right direction. The problem is that toward NA I have a dirt road very close, so I had to go with the feedpoint behind the house and down the hill. I knew a 1000 ft roll of RG-6 we'd ordered in Ecuador was arriving at any time, so I could move according to the cable available.

Once I found the right path to deploy it, it was just a matter of getting it up as high as possible so the curious cows wouldn't want to grab it or chew it, like you'll see in some of the videos posted. That NA Beverage ended up like an inverted U because of the terrain. It started low, went up, and halfway in it went back down — something the low-band purists would be horrified about. The NA Bev showed 199 m. No further questions, your honor.

Edgar Arrives — and So Does the Sun¶

When Edgar arrived on Monday before the contest, he not only brought two more big suitcases and a small one — he also brought the first sunny day with almost no wind since I'd been here! A beautiful day to work on antennas.

First thing, we put up the 160 vertical, even with David's help, who still hadn't left. I could finish the details sitting on a ladder made of bamboo, of course.

We went on to lower both Spiderbeams, but not without first cleaning the telescopic masts while I was lowering sections, because they were full of the typical wet-environment mold. Without cleaning them it would've been very hard to raise them again.

Back in March I had tried, with the help of locals, to raise all the sections of the Spiderbeam mast that's by the lake, but it was very windy and it was hard to explain to them how to hold it so it wouldn't fall, so two sections stayed down. This time, besides raising it completely, I wanted to put a new balun and also change the cable connector, and give it a general check, although at first sight it looked pretty good.

The one that didn't look so good was the one sitting on the second-floor balcony of the house. The guys had put that one together in a hurry and supposedly temporarily — but sometimes that "temporary" becomes "forever." That was the Spiderbeam that wasn't working, or at least not working as it should, with very weird SWR readings. That one was due for full service and relocation well up on the roof terrace, gaining a good 3 meters in height and, above all, getting it away from the roof.

Evening falls — back to the shack. First we put the Acom together. Put in the transformer, the tubes, and fixed a problem on the power cable that got damaged in transport. The best was to pull it from inside, cut off a piece and put it back on properly.

Now with the right 8xAB switch with SO-239 connectors, it was just a matter of finishing the jumpers and starting with setup and configuration. Edgar started some on-air tests, something I hadn't done until then, although limited to using the only antenna available until that Monday night, the 40 m EU one.

Tuesday: Spider-Roof and Spider-Lake¶

On Tuesday we asked David to help so we could make the Spiderbeam process faster and easier. We started with the one on the roof.

When we lowered it and tilted it, the reason for the bad performance was obvious. The 4 fiberglass support tubes were completely full of water, which made them conductive. That's why it looked so ugly and sagged in the middle. I added some guy lines the middle of each tube was missing, stretched every element well, changed the balun, flipped the coax to put the dry end with a brand-new connector up, protected every contact, and it was ready to go up to the terrace. We prepared the guy ropes I'd brought from the U.S. with that in mind and we started lifting the mast with David's and Edgar's help on that super slippery terrace floor. Once it was halfway up I checked SWR and, as expected, now it was behaving normally.

Once we finished the Spider-Roof, we went on to the Spider-Lake. That one was working; it was nicely tensioned, didn't have water inside the tubes, but still I changed the balun and connector. And up it went. Finally we were able to raise the mast completely.

While Edgar was testing on the air with the shiny Spiderbeams, I connected the new feedpoint on the 160 m vertical, connected the newly tuned radials, and also raised the new 80 m vertical with the 12 radials of 20 m that Edgar already had ready.

I thought the tuning part was going to take me a good amount of hours, up and down, because both antennas were completely new.

For the 160 one there was no way to calculate the length of the three top-hat wires, so Milen suggested I start from 10 meters each. What were the chances that on the first try I'd get 1:1 on 1.890? There was no need to lower anything, just add a piece of wire to the radiator and the problem was solved. What I thought was going to take me half a day took me just a few minutes. The antenna ended up X=0 at 1.850. One less. Or better said, one more.

The 80 m one? Easy. I asked Edgar for 20-meter long radials and started with 20 m on the radiator, knowing it was going to be long, but I had to see how long. X=0 at 3.460. We lowered it, cut one meter off the top, folded the radials the same amount, and now it moved up to 3.700. Nobody touch anything else!

In fact, we still had time to go raise the third "Spamboo" that was already prepared on the ground.

If someone had told me the day before that I was actually going to have every antenna ready by Tuesday, I would've laughed in their face. At least something had to go right.

Now all that was left were wiring and configuration details in the shack, but the heavy work was done 3 days before the contest, which was exactly what I wanted. No more, no less.

Wednesday: Configuration¶

Now yes — with almost everything connected, I had to start configuring and doing some tests.

It got a bit complicated to make the logic work the way I wanted with this Ranko system. Especially because, as he himself says, it still hasn't been fully developed. For example, if an antenna is selected on radio A from the Antenna Genius Left, there's no way to see from the Antenna Genius Right that that antenna is already in use, and you can even select it. He says there's enough isolation so you don't burn anything, especially with amps with protections, but better avoid it. My dear friend Ranko, time to work on that!

Another thing that took me some time to figure out was how to connect PTT to the Acom amp. Some 4O3A documentation recommends sending PTT over LAN when using Flex, but that creates a conflict when you use another amp that's not theirs. There are even a couple of docs with slightly different instructions, and to top it off the TGXL software wasn't responding to the PTT source change. No matter if I chose RCA, it kept having PTT over LAN and I never managed to get RCA to work. After a parade of cables from here to there and from there to here, I finally went for the usual: RCA connected straight from the Flex to the Acom, but PTT for the TGXL working over LAN. Hmmm… I wasn't totally convinced it was the best option, but it was the only one that worked for me. It was going to be a "let's test and see."

Thursday: Sleep Schedule¶

Thursday already.

What was left was to configure software, ports, record the DVKs, and test a little bit more how everything behaved. The idea was to stay up late that night to push my sleep schedule toward the contest start time. For that I sealed my room completely to make it totally dark and, now that I had the setup working the way I wanted, I went to sleep around 5 a.m.

I was able to sleep 8 hours straight. I got up, ate something light, but there were still several hours left before the start, so I went back to bed without thinking I could fall asleep again. But at some point I did, and I slept another 2 hours of a very important nap.

Now yes — there was just over an hour and a half to go. Another not-so-heavy meal that Edgar made would be the last solid thing I'd eat until Sunday after the contest.

About 45 minutes before the start I sat for the first time at the radio with the intention of doing some QSOs and reserving a frequency. Choosing the starting band wasn't that easy, because basically at that time from HC8 you have activity — and good activity — from 40 to 10 meters. But just like I'd thought before, I wanted to try for a fast first hour at the start. For that I needed as many Americans as possible. My best option was the classic, 20 m.

In those warm-up QSOs I asked for some honest signal reports and apparently my signals weren't bad, so the start looked promising. It's always in the back of my mind to beat those 439 QSOs of the first hour of 2023 from 6Y1V, but there's a huge difference in signals and antennas between one station and the other, so it was not going to happen from here.

The Contest: First Hour¶

One of my biggest mistakes was not being on the air in the days leading up to the contest, for two main reasons: to thin out a bit the number of people only interested in the contact because it's a rarely active DXCC, and second, and no less important, to get used to the new callsign HD8R.

This became obvious a few minutes after the contest started. For the first time I felt the ferocity of people trying to work a unique mult — even a double mult for most. The pileup was way too intense, nothing even close to what I had experienced before in a contest.

Yes, there were Americans, which is what I wanted for a fast hour, but there were too many, and of course mixed with people from ALL over the world. 341 QSOs the first hour was really disappointing.

I had to start touching radio settings, play with AGC-T, try different modes and even attenuation, and thank goodness I had diversity and there's always someone who shines. Both the operator and the radio were totally overwhelmed by the intensity of the response.

At some point in the first hours Edgar showed up with his laptop in hand showing me the scoreboard, but I asked him please not to do it again. This time I had decided the scoreboard was for the rest, for the ones watching, not for me. I didn't want to compete with anyone but myself. I never knew where I was placed or how the others were doing. No pressure. (Even so, I still strongly defend the use of the scoreboard as a tool for transparency and visibility for those who enjoy seeing the contest live.)

I wanted to enjoy what I love doing, especially having the huge chance of putting HC8 back on the CQWW after so many years.

From the start I've been honest with myself. With Spiderbeams, bamboos and some wires, I couldn't compete with the monsters out there with first-class stations like EF8R, 8P5A and PJ4K.

"I'm here to have fun and do the best I can."

Even before the contest I printed some labels and stuck them right in front of me with phrases like: "Enjoy it, it's your passion," "When you think something bad, keep going! It's just sleep trying to beat you."

From about the 38/40-hour mark, mind and body go into survival mode. Hallucinations start to show up. Those phrases had been written by my lucid self, motivating my zombie self in case he was needed.

Day 1 Highlights¶

Not getting a good first hour on 20, I put the second radio on 15 and started calling in 2BIQ (note the difference: in SSB there's no S for Synchronized), alternating a bit of 20/15 m and then 15/10 m until, as I'd planned, exactly at 03z I would go to 40 m.

By chance I found a spot on 7184 and stayed there for two hours until at 5 I focused on 40/80, moving every multiplier I could. That first night I made 1000 QSOs on 40 with the Bamboo Yagis, to the point of feeling that it was my best band. 80 was quite disappointing although with a few interesting QSOs with Asia.

I was surprised by how well the Beverages worked; they helped a lot to mitigate the QRN caused by being permanently inside the clouds. 160? It was like I didn't have an antenna. Only 2 QSOs that night. Awful.

The opening on 40 with Asia at Galápagos sunrise was very interesting. Propagation seemed unbeatable. By then I already had one eye on 10 and 15. When I started seeing the signals, I went. Straight to 10 meters.

If the pileup had seemed intense with the Americans and the rest of the world, you can imagine what it was like when I started getting into Europe. That's when you realize why you need to put out a good signal to be heard. That never-ending habit of calling and calling and calling just for sport, without listening to a thing. Even some who called without knowing who they were calling — when I gave them 59 10 they asked for the callsign.

There was no way. I tried to stay as calm as possible and not lose the little control I had over the pileup, but the number of times I had to repeat the same callsign and exchange because others kept calling and calling when it wasn't their turn was insane. It was impossible to go much over 200/hr in the first two hours. At this point we should all know that by following a couple of basic rules, we would waste way less time than by calling like crazy.

Only when the pileup calmed down a bit and I reorganized my brain was I able to get to 300-and-something but not much more. The good thing was I stayed 5 hours straight on the same frequency on 10 meters. At least nobody came to call on top of me and stay on the frequency, like did happen several times on Sunday.

Even though 10 was still open and with more people than I think I'd ever seen in my life, I didn't want to neglect 15 meters, which was in the same shape, so I prioritized a couple of hours on 15 without ever leaving 10 but at a lower pace. Then the other way around: priority 10 and lower pace on 15. That way I could stay around 300/hr until the predominance of Americans on 10/15 showed up around 19 UTC.

Usually the fastest hour is not made at 19 hours into the contest, but this was my particular case. An hour of 382 QSOs that wasn't full 2BIQ. The first 15 minutes were on two bands and then I focused on 10 meters. This time I felt way more comfortable with the dual-band thing. I'm convinced that with a lot of practice you can get way higher rates, even matching or beating what you can do with just one radio. Actually, the only time I did 11 QSOs in one minute in this contest was in 2BIQ: 5 on 15 and 6 on 10.

I admit it's extremely hard, especially if you have extreme pileup on both sides, but if the pileup is orderly, it's 100% doable. There's still a lot to learn and polish in this area. The CW-machines guys have this super refined, but in phone there's still a ton to learn — at a human-capacity level. Don't come to me with AI, TTS, and even less with QSO bots — something we urgently need to start talking about before we lose human-to-human competition forever.

Day 2 Hardships¶

The second day kept being full of very dense pileups. Maybe I spent too much time on 20 meters in the first hours of Sunday and when I wanted to go to 40 it was impossible to find a hole to call. I tried hard, but this thing of stacking so many people in 75 kHz is only for the real Big Guns. And even they are the ones who take the frequency by force if needed, like it happened to me twice with well-known stations. At least one of them nicely asked me to move.

Everything that 40 meters had been the first night, it was equally disappointing the second one. Same thing with 80 meters. Not so much for not finding a frequency, but for very low signals and very high noise.

Up to that point I was doing pretty well overall. With a slower pace than I would've liked but pretty steady, until 07 UTC came. I don't know what happens at that time but no matter what band I called on, nobody answered. Falling out of rhythm was brutal. I still hadn't gotten out of the chair. Something clicked in some part of the brain that remembered I was sleepy. 28 QSOs in an hour calling on two bands! I was losing the battle against myself.

I got up to go take a shower fast and recover for when that kind of dead zone went away, which on top of everything I didn't even know why it happened. On my way to the room I ran into Edgar and I told him: "I need a cold shower!"

Edgar, totally calm:

"Ah, there's a problem with the pump, we don't have water."

…………^%$#%^&*

There had to be water somewhere. You know those water reservoirs behind the toilet? There was water there. Let's go! Why are you making that face? Worse would've been to take water from stage 2 of the toilet — stage 1 is still clean!

The face and head wash and the little 35-minute break were useful. At least for the next 6 hours.

I felt a ton of fatigue again around late morning Galápagos time. I even think I operated for about an hour standing up. I just moved the footswitches off the desk and that way I could move a little. I don't know if Edgar was there and saw me, because I must've looked pretty crazy.

At some point I woke up again and kept going without problems until the end.

Reflections¶

Like I said before, I didn't have a goal or a target. So when I finished with 9,730 QSOs I had several feelings. The first was: "I could've made it to 10k, right?" The second was: "Almost 10k with these antennas? Man, this place is amazing!" And the third was: "We can't wait any longer to put real antennas here."

I also started to analyze a bit what I did wrong or what I could've done better under these conditions. I tried to pass every multiplier I could, although I surely could've been more aggressive about it. It didn't go that bad — looking at the exact tie in number of DXCCs on 20-15-10 meters. What if I had spent more time on dual CQ? What if I had used just one radio all the time and the other only to move mults? What if I had gone S&P instead of only running? And many other questions — that's the nice part of this, because you're always learning.

When I looked at the scoreboard I was surprised to be (again) almost identical (in points and mults) to Tom 8P5A, and of course the double surprise of seeing the incredible performance of Emir at EF8R. I knew that number of QSOs was possible, but the number of mults was — and still is — unbelievable to me. Congrats Emir and Tom for the WR and NA records respectively. I still needed to know what had happened with Rich at PJ4K, who could've been the real competition to Emir, but he hadn't been on the scoreboard, unfortunately.

Then I started looking at the HC8A/HC8N results and ran into the surprise that the SA record is from HC8A (N6KT) in 1999 with 18.6 million, just 150,000 points below my score, so impossible to keep.

How good did propagation have to be, especially from 40 to 10 meters, for someone with expedition antennas to get this score and this number of QSOs?

Clearly we were very, very lucky. It was a real radio party. Even though the trend seemed to be going down, especially in the number of mults, this weekend gave all of us a huge surprise — especially seeing the number of DXCCs present in the results of assisted stations and even the unassisted ones. If not, look at EF8R beating by far the number of mults from EA8BH in 1999, something that looked like pure utopia.

Note: I was wrong here. The number of multipliers isn't higher than EA8BH's, which confirms that the trend is clearly going downward — working 40 zones on each band is practically impossible now. Luckily we can still make up for it with the number of QSOs, but it's just not the same anymore.

Contesting — what we call radiosport — is more alive than ever, but please, let's take care of it, because it's pretty much all we have left. I think a lot of people are not realizing the damage they're doing with current technologies. I hope those who are in charge of the contests are up to the task and don't look the other way. Maybe they haven't realized it yet out of ignorance, but what seemed like a problem for the future is becoming a very real present problem.

Station Setup¶

Antennas¶

160 m: 22-meter top-loaded vertical (capacitive top-hat)
80 m: 1/4-wave vertical
40 m: 4-element wire Yagi NA @ 10 mH + 4-element wire Yagi EU @ 10 mH
20 / 15 / 10 m: Spiderbeam fixed NA + Spiderbeam fixed EU
RX: Beverage NA (199 m) + Beverage EU (185 m)

Radios and amplifiers¶

Flex 8600 + Flex 6600 + MK2R+
PGXL + Acom 2000A

Results¶

Band	QSOs	Zones	Countries
160m	10	3	3
80m	279	21	55
40m	1,357	30	93
20m	2,173	34	117
15m	2,408	35	117
10m	3,503	31	117
Total	9,730	154	502

Final score: 18,748,480

Notable stats¶

Best 60-minute rate: 382/hr (19:10–20:09 UTC, day 1)
Best 30-minute rate: 412/hr (19:38–20:07)
Best 10-minute rate: 420/hr (19:58–20:07)
Gross QSOs: 9,853 — Dupes: 123 — Net QSOs: 9,730
Unique callsigns worked: 6,175
South American record reference: HC8A (N6KT, 1999) — 18.6 M, only ~150 k points above this score

Hourly QSO rate¶

Hour-by-hour breakdown

Hour     160     80     40     20     15     10    Rate Total    Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000       0      0      0    341      0      0    341    341    3.5
0100       0      0      0    127    127     16    270    611    6.3
0200       0      0      0      0    117    104    221    832    8.6
0300       0      0    211      0      1      0    212   1044   10.7
0400       0      5    165      0      0      0    170   1214   12.5
0500       0     82     84      0      0      0    166   1380   14.2
0600       2     33    138      0      0      0    173   1553   16.0
0700       0     28     95      0      3      0    126   1679   17.3
0800       0     41     94      0      0      0    135   1814   18.6
0900       0     41     59     70      0      0    170   1984   20.4
1000       0      0     44     65      0      0    109   2093   21.5
1100       0      0    118     39     17      0    174   2267   23.3
1200       0      0     21      0      5    191    217   2484   25.5
1300       0      0      0      0      0    233    233   2717   27.9
1400       0      0      0      0      0    286    286   3003   30.9
1500       0      0      0      0      0    301    301   3304   34.0
1600       0      0      0      0     13    267    280   3584   36.8
1700       0      0      0      0    228     59    287   3871   39.8
1800       0      0      0      0    242     52    294   4165   42.8
1900       0      0      0      0     77    282    359   4524   46.5
2000       0      0      0      0     31    293    324   4848   49.8
2100       0      0      0      0    309      1    310   5158   53.0
2200       0      0      0      1    129    129    259   5417   55.7
2300       0      0      0     81     76    111    268   5685   58.4
0000       0      0      0    252      1      0    253   5938   61.0
0100       0      0      2    177      3      2    184   6122   62.9
0200       0      0      0    195     27      0    222   6344   65.2
0300       0      0      5    201      0      0    206   6550   67.3
0400       0      2     19    122      0      0    143   6693   68.8
0500       0      0     24    132      2      0    158   6851   70.4
0600       0      0     58     88      0      0    146   6997   71.9
0700       0      6      3     19      0      0     28   7025   72.2
0800       2      3     31      1      0      0     37   7062   72.6
0900       6     33     54      2      0      0     95   7157   73.6
1000       0      5     71      4      0      0     80   7237   74.4
1100       0      0     61      0     49      0    110   7347   75.5
1200       0      0      0      0    175     71    246   7593   78.0
1300       0      0      0      0    168     40    208   7801   80.2
1400       0      0      0      0     57    130    187   7988   82.1
1500       0      0      0      0      6    159    165   8153   83.8
1600       0      0      0      0     27    145    172   8325   85.6
1700       0      0      0      0     84     80    164   8489   87.2
1800       0      0      0      0     76     71    147   8636   88.8
1900       0      0      0      0     95    125    220   8856   91.0
2000       0      0      0     48      2    186    236   9092   93.4
2100       0      0      0     23      6    151    180   9272   95.3
2200       0      0      0     94    122     18    234   9506   97.7
2300       0      0      0     91    133      0    224   9730  100.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Total     10    279   1357   2173   2408   3503   9730

Worked on all 6 bands¶

K8AZ, K3LR, K3JO, N2AA, K2LE, PJ2T, VA1EET.

Closing¶

Thanks to my friends LU8EOT, K2IN and LU5DX for letting me have fun from the station in another one of my greatest radio adventures, in the nicest of contests.

Thanks again, Edgar, for the invaluable help.

Thanks to everyone for the QSYs and the QSOs.

To the one who made it all the way here — thank you. It shows you're just as crazy and in love with this hobby as I am.

Gallery¶

73, Manu LU9ESD / AC1NU