The official CQ WPX Contest database has confirmed a new Slovak record in the Single-Op 80-Meter Low Power category. Viliam, OM0AAO, operating under the call sign OM0A, achieved a confirmed score of 649,305 points in the 2026 contest (751 QSOs, 423 WPX multipliers, 23.0 hours of operation), thereby breaking the 18-year-old record set by Vlado, OM7AB, in 2008 (409,968 points, 564 QSOs, 351 multipliers).
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OM7AB’s Dominance in the Past
OM7AB’s record on the 80-meter band in the Low Power category dated back to 2008 and had long been considered an exceptionally challenging benchmark. In the words of OM0A himself, “as long as Vlado was still alive and contesting, any result better than his would be considered very good.” This assessment is also confirmed by the official CQ WPX SSB results table for Slovakia—OM7AB’s 2008 result remained the highest Slovak score in this category for eighteen years, while OM7AB himself appears in several top positions on the results table from various years (2004 through 2010), confirming his long-term dominance in this discipline.
How the Record Was Broken
Interestingly, OM0A ended up on the 80-meter band largely out of necessity. A week before the contest, he discovered that his tribander was not connected—after gradually ruling out the band decoder and the antenna switch on the mast, a measurement with the nanoVNA analyzer finally revealed a broken coaxial cable above the rotator, likely caused by tension when the antenna was previously rotated 360°. Since OM0A had his best antenna on the 80-meter band, he chose this band as his only realistic option.
In preparation, he used S53ZO’s (SH6) contest log analyzer to analyze OM7AB’s publicly available log from his record-breaking 2008 season. This analysis allowed him to track the times when OM7AB made contacts to individual DXCC regions, as well as his hourly pace and the structure of his breaks —that is, to take into account historical propagation openings to various parts of the world and to time his own operating and rest periods in a similar manner.
OM0A described the contest itself as a physically demanding two-night marathon with minimal sleep (less than three hours during the first night). In the second half of the contest, he found himself in a head-to-head battle for the lead with the Czech station OL7P (operator Paľo, OK1CRM), with OM0A having a higher number of contacts for most of the final phase, though OL7P caught up thanks to a higher number of multipliers. In the end, OM0A suffered a narrow defeat in the number of points for the contacts themselves (a difference of just one point), but the high number of WPX multipliers provided the decisive edge.
OM0A’s Error Rate
Immediately after the contest ended, OM0A reported his own, as-is tally in his logbook: 771 contacts (8 of which were marked as duplicates), 430 WPX multipliers, and a score of 682,410 points. However, after official processing and cross-checking of the logs by the CQ WPX organizers, a confirmed score of 649,305 points was entered into the final database, with 751 valid contacts and 423 multipliers.
The difference between the preliminary (unprocessed) and final confirmed results represents a decrease of 33,105 points, which is approximately 4.8% of the originally reported score—a typical correction rate following a cross-check of logs in contests of this scale.
A discrepancy between an operator’s own tally and the official result is a common occurrence with large contest logs —when cross-checking all submitted logs, the organizers identify unconfirmed contacts (busted calls) or incorrectly recorded WPX multipliers, which are subtracted from the final score. In the case of OM0A, this review resulted in a reduction of 20 recognized contacts (from 771 to 751) and 7 multipliers (from 430 to 423).
Complete Summary
The new Slovak record in the CQ WPX SSB Single-Op 80 Meters Low Power category has belonged to station OM0A since the 2026 contest, with a confirmed score of 649,305 points, thereby breaking the 18-year-old record set by OM7AB in 2008 (409,968 points). Paradoxically, a malfunction in the main antenna contributed to the record, which literally forced OM0A to focus exclusively on the 80-meter band, where he was subsequently able to effectively plan his operating schedule through a targeted analysis of OM7AB’s historical log using the SH6 tool by S53ZO. The difference between the preliminary score immediately after the contest (682,410 points) and the final confirmed result (649,305 points) illustrates the typical margin of correction during the official processing of large contest logs.
