CQ WPX SSB 2026

31. März 20268. April 2026 DF7EE 0 Kommentare

After winning the 2025 WPX SSB from Madeira, operating CQ3W, I thought I will give it another shot to further push the score. The 2025 story is here: https://df7ee.de/cq-wpx-ssb-2025/

The trip started uneventful, flights were on time, taxi waited at the airport and I could start with the setup right away when I arrived at the Casa Da Tia Clementina in Santana. I had one day less than usually, as I arrived Wednesday instead of Tuesday, but the setup was all done on day one.

I put some hundret test QSOs in on SSB and also had FT8 on air for those who are still collecting.

I wanted to copy the strategy from last year and tried avoid slow hours and only work at times with potential high rates. Avoid the low bands as they are usually slower. The math is simple: 100 QSOs on 40m are the same point as 200 QSOs on the high bands. So everything above one 100 is a win!

Day One started like a blast!

Low band rates were not so sexy, but the high bands really rocked! The rates looked really promising and I had a really goof feeling that I can improve last years score.

Many hours close to 200 and a few above – right what I wanted. I finished day one with 2700 QSOs, only the points were about 900.000 points lower than last year. What went wrong?

Day two highly motivated!

I started day two highly motivated, but I could not find any rate no matter what I tried. 20m – rates below 100 (!), try 15m, not better, maybe 10m … no rates! What is wrong? Frustration began to set in, and the the world record dreams were gone. 🙁

I had to settle for many hours below 100 and I had to call CQ over and over again before I could make another QSO. This really succed!

The decicion to stop accepting low hours and take a break was obvious, but I did not think about it at the time. This was my huge mistake. Half an hour before my allowed 24h operating time for classic was over, I finally took a break and waited for the US to open.

This decision was great – but way too late!!!

When I restarted I had really fast (ok for second day fast) 1.5 hours, but only the first 25 minutes counted for my score!

DANG!

The final score for classic was way below last year!

12.7 M – lets see if it is good enogh for top 3 classic.

RAW Scores before Logcheck:

I continued to operate at least to get the 4000 QSOs in and I even spend some time on 80m for fun. After 27 hours I thought is is game over for me and I will find a glass of wine in the Casa kitchen.

Of course a good contest article can not end without a map, right?

Here is the tool I am using: https://qsomap.cqgma.org/ADIF_to_Karte.php

Thanks again to the team CR3W for constantly improving the station in Madeira and the oportunity to operate from here for the 26th time now! Trip number 27 will be CQ WW SSB in october again!

Without you guys – this would not be possible!

If you have read the stroy all the way till here…., it is time to say good bye to the FT8 haters NOW!

You know the drill!

As always I added about 3500 QSOs in FT8 and a little FT4 to the log:

I still don’t know why there are pilups and demand for FT8 from Madeira anyway? You can work Madeira every day on FT8 as there are a lot of local stations QRV … CT3MD, CT3IQ and CT3KN just to name a few.

Anyway – here are some stats: