so ive been chasing ZL9 for like three years and last weekend there was a small dxpedition active on 17m and i finally managed to break through after probably 45 minutes of trying. figured id write up what ended up working since i wasted a lot of time doing the wrong things first.

first 20 minutes i was just calling on their frequency like an idiot, which obviously got me nowhere and probably annoyed the operator. once i realized they were working split and listening up 3 to 7 i started actually paying attention to the rhythm. thats the thing nobody really told me early on — you have to listen to how the operator is moving through the pileup. some guys work strictly up the band, some jump around, some seem to favor stations that call right when the previous QSO ends vs waiting a beat.

what finally got me through was timing my call to end just as i guessed they would key up to listen, and i shifted maybe 1.5 khz above where most of the pileup was sitting. also dropped my call to just the suffix for a couple rounds which felt weird but seemed to work. running about 400w into a 4el yagi on that band so not a big gun but not barefoot either.

anyway curious if others have figured out patterns or tricks that consistently work, or if its just luck most of the time

timing is everything honestly. ive spent years watching how different ops run pileups and the ones who are really good at it have a very predictable cadence once you lock onto it. you learn to send your call so it ends right in the window, not during it. the suffix-only thing works sometimes but some dxpedition operators actually hate that and will deliberately skip you, depends on the op.

the frequency selection thing you mentioned is real too. most of the pileup is lazy and just parks where everyone else is. shifting up a bit especially if the op has been creeping upward is a solid move. i also listen to see if the op comes back with a partial call — if they did that the previous two or three times in roughly the same area of the split, thats a hint about where theyre actually hearing well.

one thing that made a big difference for me personally was cleaning up my keying. i run a keyer and had my weight set a bit heavy which made my dits kind of soft at speed. cleaner cw just cuts through better in a mess of signals, seems obvious but i ignored it for years.

congrats on the ZL9, thats not easy. i tried for one last year and gave up after an hour, my antenna situation is pretty compromised so i kind of knew it was a long shot but still.

the split listening thing took me a while to really get. i think i read about it in like three different places before it actually clicked what people meant by following the op. also didnt realize how much it matters to just not transmit when the pileup is at peak chaos — sometimes waiting like 10 minutes for things to thin out a bit works better than grinding away when everyones going nuts