so ive been chasing the VK9MA operation on Mellish Reef for like three days and kept getting absolutely nowhere. just wall to wall callers and i couldnt get a single answer out of them. tried for probably 6-7 hours spread across multiple sessions and nothing. starting to think my signal just wasnt cutting it.

what finally worked for me was a combination of things. first i stopped transmitting on the most obvious split frequencies. everyone was stacking up around 5 and 10 up so i started throwing my call in at like 7.3 up and 13 up, weird spots that werent as crowded. second thing was i started really listening to the DX station's rhythm, like how long a QSO was taking him and whether he was moving his listening frequency around. this one took me a while to notice but he was definitely drifting up by like half a kHz every few minutes then jumping back down.

once i figured that out i just camped ahead of where he was drifting and got a reply on the second call. whole QSO was done in under 20 seconds. 73 and logged. felt good after so many hours of frustration honestly.

anyone else have techniques that work consistently or is it always just kind of luck plus timing

yeah the frequency drift thing is real and most people completely ignore it. i noticed the same pattern on the 3Y0 operation a few years back, the op was slowly walking up the band maybe 200-300hz at a time and then resetting. guys who figured that out were getting through way more consistently than the crowd who just parked on the obvious spots.

the other thing i swear by is not calling every single transmission. a lot of guys are just mashing the key constantly and the ops can hear that, it turns into noise. i'll skip every second or third pass, let the pile thin a tiny bit, then throw in a clean sharp call. works better than hammering away. also helps to send your call just once, clearly, not twice. the DX station heard you the first time or he didnt, sending it again in the same transmission just muddies things.

power helps obviously but honestly technique is probably 70% of it once youre above like 100 watts into a decent antenna. ive worked rare ones running 100w into a dipole that guys with a kw and a stack couldnt crack. timing is everything.

im still pretty new to chasing DX seriously but the split thing confused me for a long time. like i understood the concept but i kept just guessing where to transmit and never getting anywhere. someone at my club finally explained to me that you really have to listen for maybe 10-15 minutes before you even think about calling, just to understand what the op is doing. seems obvious in retrospect but i was just jumping in and calling like an idiot for my first few pileups lol.

havent worked anything super rare yet, VK9 would be amazing. whats a realistic setup for getting into pileups like that, is a tribander at 40 feet going to do it or do i really need more antenna