2026 ARRL DX CW - HD8R¶
What a wonderful weekend once again, enjoying pure radio in our little on-air paradise.
The Operation¶
- Callsign: HD8R
- Category: Multi-Two, High Power
- QTH: Galápagos (South America)
- Operating time: 46:09 hours
- Operators: HC8M, LU5DX, LU8EOT, LU9ESD, LW6DXD, OH2TA, SM0CXU
- Club: Araucaria DX Group
Build-Up¶
This time we arrived the Sunday before the contest: Mark LU8EOT, Martín LU5DX, Manu LU9ESD, and for the first time José LW6DXD — Mark's father — joined us. Even though he's not an active ham, he became part of the team and helped with whatever we needed, especially in the kitchen area. Thanks José!
That same day we began setting up the station and fixing the usual things we run into every time we come back here.
Since we still use POTA-style antennas — fiberglass verticals, bamboo supports, and Spiderbeams — there's always something to repair before a contest. This time we were lucky and found no major damage. We only needed to replace the bamboo pole supporting the reflector of the NA 40 m array, fix a few wires, and take down the Spiderbeam on the shack's rooftop for some fine-tuning so it would perform well on both CW and phone. We also reinstalled the 80 m vertical that had been taken down after the last contest, and of course finished building the shack.
On Wednesday the remaining three team members arrived. For the first time we had the pleasure to have with us Pekka OH2TA and Thomas SM0CXU, who came together with Edgar K2IN/HC8M.
By then all bands were already operational, so our special guests enjoyed making the first QSOs to test the station. That same Wednesday Manu installed the NA Beverage in the exact same spot used during his last CQ WW SSB, and everything was basically ready — only small details remained. Finishing the heavy work two days before the contest always feels great.
The Contest¶
As usual, the contest started with a few unexpected issues that hadn't shown up during the two days of testing, which limited our rate during the always-intense first hour. Nothing we couldn't fix quickly, and we continued without major problems — at least until Saturday morning, when we experienced the first power outage. Fortunately it lasted only 10 minutes and we were back on the air.
Early in the contest, when we saw our friends at the ZF1A contest team also operating M/2, we knew it would be a tough battle. We're well aware of the potential of a top-level station run by world-class operators. They kept us fully focused throughout the weekend via the live scoreboard.
Without in-band stations, our start was slower, but hour by hour the gap began to shrink until Saturday afternoon (local time), when we managed to get within about 200k points of them — and then chaos struck: once again we lost power at 00:37z on Sunday.
Unfortunately our generator wasn't operational due to a missing spare part that didn't arrive in time, so all we could do was wait. Nearly two long hours passed before we could get back in the game, and by then the gap had grown to more than 800,000 points.
Even though the team stayed in good spirits and never gave up, we knew catching them would be nearly impossible — simply because the remaining activity wouldn't be enough to close such a large deficit. Still, we finished a little over 300,000 points behind them, which makes us extremely happy with the station's overall performance — especially on 160 and 80 meters, where our simple verticals performed far beyond expectations.
A Second Beverage Saves the Low Bands¶
On Saturday afternoon Manu went out into the field to deploy a new Beverage much farther away from the TX antennas, since the first night the existing Beverage was almost unusable due to heavy 80 m interference while trying to receive on 160. Everyone was pleasantly surprised by the performance of this new Bev, allowing us to finish with 51 multipliers on 160 and 58 on 80 — a big improvement over last year's results in this same contest.
Results¶
| Band | QSOs | Mults |
|---|---|---|
| 160m | 333 | 51 |
| 80m | 774 | 58 |
| 40m | 1,251 | 61 |
| 20m | 1,561 | 61 |
| 15m | 1,989 | 61 |
| 10m | 1,950 | 60 |
| Total | 7,858 | 352 |
Final score: 8,298,048
Notable stats¶
- Best 60-minute rate: 430/hr (00:03–01:02 UTC)
- Best 30-minute rate: 444/hr
- Best 10-minute rate: 474/hr
- Gross QSOs: 8,390 — Dupes: 532 — Net QSOs: 7,858
- Unique callsigns worked: 3,210
- Stations worked on all 6 bands: 188
- 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 0 216 199 0 415 415 5.3
0100 0 0 0 232 168 0 400 815 10.4
0200 0 0 157 179 0 0 336 1151 14.6
0300 46 0 178 90 0 0 314 1465 18.6
0400 30 134 121 0 0 0 285 1750 22.3
0500 32 121 64 0 0 0 217 1967 25.0
0600 27 55 36 0 0 0 118 2085 26.5
0700 36 31 33 0 0 0 100 2185 27.8
0800 20 19 26 0 0 0 65 2250 28.6
0900 2 30 27 0 0 0 59 2309 29.4
1000 7 55 36 0 0 0 98 2407 30.6
1100 6 50 65 0 0 0 121 2528 32.2
1200 0 2 56 58 14 0 130 2658 33.8
1300 0 0 0 4 96 149 249 2907 37.0
1400 0 0 0 0 103 99 202 3109 39.6
1500 0 0 0 0 114 133 247 3356 42.7
1600 0 0 0 0 110 162 272 3628 46.2
1700 0 0 0 0 70 127 197 3825 48.7
1800 0 0 0 0 99 140 239 4064 51.7
1900 0 0 0 0 143 151 294 4358 55.5
2000 0 0 0 0 149 120 269 4627 58.9
2100 0 0 0 0 106 148 254 4881 62.1
2200 0 0 0 28 27 124 179 5060 64.4
2300 0 0 1 161 48 30 240 5300 67.4
0000 0 0 0 87 48 0 135 5435 69.2
0100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5435 69.2
0200 0 59 76 0 0 0 135 5570 70.9
0300 10 33 103 13 0 0 159 5729 72.9
0400 65 44 29 0 0 0 138 5867 74.7
0500 24 25 32 0 0 0 81 5948 75.7
0600 5 28 38 0 0 0 71 6019 76.6
0700 4 10 13 14 0 0 41 6060 77.1
0800 2 7 7 1 0 0 17 6077 77.3
0900 11 13 20 0 0 0 44 6121 77.9
1000 0 31 37 0 0 0 68 6189 78.8
1100 6 21 53 1 0 0 81 6270 79.8
1200 0 6 29 58 0 0 93 6363 81.0
1300 0 0 14 50 41 0 105 6468 82.3
1400 0 0 0 58 31 6 95 6563 83.5
1500 0 0 0 8 49 64 121 6684 85.1
1600 0 0 0 18 15 78 111 6795 86.5
1700 0 0 0 8 31 70 109 6904 87.9
1800 0 0 0 0 67 74 141 7045 89.7
1900 0 0 0 0 62 75 137 7182 91.4
2000 0 0 0 0 68 82 150 7332 93.3
2100 0 0 0 75 26 77 178 7510 95.6
2200 0 0 0 97 35 41 173 7683 97.8
2300 0 0 0 105 70 0 175 7858 100.0
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Total 333 774 1251 1561 1989 1950 7858
Station Setup¶
Antennas¶
- 160 m: 22-meter top-loaded vertical
- 80 m: 1/4-wave vertical
- 40 m: 4-element wire Yagi NA + 4-element wire Yagi EU
- 20 / 15 / 10 m: Spiderbeam fixed NA + Spiderbeam fixed EU
- RX: Beverages NA (improved mid-contest with a second, longer wire farther from the TX antennas)
Closing¶
We want to congratulate the ZF1A contest team for their excellent result and for keeping the live scoreboard exciting all weekend long. Also to our friends at K1LZ for another fantastic M/S result with a fully remote operation.
Special thanks to Thomas SM0CXU and Pekka OH2TA for traveling halfway around the world to be with us — it was a true pleasure and honor to operate together. Hope to see you again soon.
And of course, thanks to our friends Ramón LU5HM, Oms PY5EG, and Krassy K1LZ, who has supported this project from the very beginning.
We feel very fortunate to help keep Galápagos active again in the major contests of the calendar.
See you in the next one!
Gallery¶
73, HD8R Team