so ive been chasing FT5/W for what feels like forever and last week the Crozet expedition was on and i decided to really pay attention to what was working vs what wasnt instead of just throwing my call in randomly like i usually do

first thing i noticed is i kept calling right on the DX station's frequency even though they said they were listening up — i know i knew this but muscle memory just takes over and you end up doing it anyway. once i actually spread up 2-3 kHz and listened to where they were actually coming back to, not where everyone else was piling, things started clicking

the other thing that helped was timing. i stopped calling during the DX station's transmission and waited for the very tail end of whoever they were working to finish, then keyed up. seems obvious but honestly i dont think most people in a pileup are doing this. they're just mashing the key constantly

also cut my exchange down to just my call, nothing else. no signal report, no name, just the call, twice if i had to, and then shut up. i think a lot of guys are sending way too much and it just muddies things up for the dx op who's trying to pull calls out of noise

anyway got the Q after maybe 20 minutes which for Crozet on 17m with my modest setup (tribander at 40 feet, no amp) felt pretty good. curious what techniques other people actually use that work, not the textbook stuff, the real stuff

yeah the timing thing is huge and i dont think people realize how much it matters. i spent about two years just calling randomly in pileups and wondering why i couldnt break anything harder than a mult in a contest. then i started actually listening to the rhythm of how a good dx op works a pileup — most of them have a very consistent cadence once they get rolling and if you can lock into that and put your call in at exactly the right moment you go from invisible to getting picked up pretty regularly

the other thing i'd add is working the band conditions angle. if the dx is on 20m and the pileup is massive, sometimes jumping to 17 or 15 when those open up gets you through in ten minutes what wouldve taken two hours on 20. you have to actually monitor where theyre operating across bands and be ready to jump. i missed a 3Y0 slot years ago because i was too stubborn to move off 20 and by the time i tried 17 the band had already shifted

your point about sending just the callsign is something i argue with people about all the time. had a guy in our club insisting you need to send your full call twice slow and clear every time and i just... no. the dx op has been doing this for 12 hours, they dont need it spelled out, they need to be able to grab your suffix out of the noise and come back to you

honest question — does split even matter if you're running like 100w and a wire? asking because i've tried all this stuff and i still feel like i basically never break anything above maybe a zone 26 or 27. starting to think its just a power game at some point