so ive been chasing VP8 for about two years now and there was a small dxpedition active last weekend on 17m and 20m. spent probably six hours total across both days just throwing my call into the pile and getting nowhere. running about 400w into a 4-el yagi at 45ft so its not like im barefoot into a dipole or anything.

what i eventually figured out, kind of by accident, was that when the dxpedition operator started working split and calling 'up 5 to 10' i kept watching where he was actually coming back to on the waterfall and just parking about 1khz above wherever that cluster was. seemed to work better than just picking random spots in the spread. got him on the third call after that.

but im curious what techniques other people use. ive heard the whole 'dont call on top of the station hes already working' thing forever but it took me a long time to really understand the timing aspect — like waiting until hes clearly done with the QSO before you even key up. also i noticed some guys were just blasting continuously and getting nothing. is there a general approach people swear by or is it just feel at this point

timing is honestly like 80% of it in my experience. you want to be transmitting right as he finishes the last exchange, not before, not a second after everyone else piles on. theres kind of a rhythm to how a good dxpedition op works and once you lock onto it it gets way easier. some of the big ops will work a steady 3-4 contacts a minute when the pile is cooperative and you can almost set a watch to it.

the other thing i do is listen to which part of the split spread hes pulling from. if he works three guys in a row all from around up 7 then i move there. people treat the split like a lottery when its actually more like reading where the fish are biting. your waterfall trick is exactly right. also keep your audio narrow, maybe 250hz or so, helps cut down the noise from adjacent signals so you can actually hear his partial calls clearly. had a situation last year with a FT5 operation where i finally cracked it just by being patient and not spamming my call — let a couple cycles go by without transmitting, then came in clean.

yeah the continuous callers drive me insane too. like congrats you are actively making yourself harder to copy AND annoying everyone else in the pile. i dont have anything super sophisticated, just a 100w ic-7300 and a wire, so breaking big pileups is mostly not happening for me but i've had decent luck on the smaller expeditions by just being really precise with my call and timing it well. sometimes running a bit of power helps but honestly i think clean audio and good timing beat raw power a lot of the time. had a pile on a T30 last spring and i worked him second call, guy next to me was running an amp and calling constantly and never got through the whole time i was listening. theres definitely something to just being disciplined about it