so ive been chasing T32 for about two years now and last weekend the T32AZ operation was running and the pileup was absolutely insane, like 3-4 khz wide on 20m and i could barely hear the dx through the noise. tried the usual stuff for the first hour or so, calling on their exact freq, calling a bit up, nothing. just getting buried.

what finally worked was listening way more carefully to where they were actually coming back to. took me probably 20 minutes of just listening before i noticed they were consistently pulling out stations ending in numbers, like they'd work a W3, then a W5, then come back to a W4. once i figured out roughly what part of the split they were fishing in i started placing my call just a touch above where the last guy they worked was transmitting. not exactly, just like 200-300 hz above.

also dropped my power slightly which sounds backwards but i think i was overdriving into the pileup and just adding to the mush. running about 600w on the amp instead of pushing the full legal limit. picked them up on the third call after that.

curious if anyone else has had luck with similar stuff or if i just got lucky with timing. also does anyone actually use the partial call technique where you only send the last two letters? ive heard mixed things about that one.

the partial call thing is real but you have to be careful with it. it works best when the dx op is clearly fishing and you can tell they heard a fragment of something. if the band is relatively quiet and you can hear them say "kilo whiskey" or whatever, then yeah throwing just your suffix makes sense. but in a full on wall of noise pileup it can backfire because other guys with the same suffix are doing the same thing and you end up creating more confusion not less.

the thing you said about watching where they're pulling stations from is honestly the most underrated skill in pileup work. most guys just transmit constantly and never stop to actually listen. i spent three years doing that before a friend of mine who does a lot of DXpeditioning told me the ops on the other end can almost always tell which stations are actually listening vs just hammering away. they tend to avoid the hammerers after a while because it's a mess to pull a call out of someone who's clearly not paying attention to where the op is working.

also timing matters way more than raw power. getting your call in right as the previous QSO ends, like literally in that half second gap, is worth more than another 100w in most cases.

yeah i dont have an amp so im always at 100w and i still manage to work a fair amount of rare dx, its definitely more about technique. the hardest part for me is just patience honestly, i get antsy and start calling when i shouldnt be and it never helps. congrats on the T32 that ones been on my list too, was the signal decent into your qth?