so ive been chasing this one entity for probably four or five months now, popped up a few times on 17m and once on 12m and i just could not break through no matter what i did. running about 500w into a 3el yagi at 45ft which honestly shouldnt be the problem, i know guys with dipoles who get through pileups fine.

what finally worked was listening way longer before transmitting. i know that sounds obvious but i mean really listening — like i sat there for almost 20 minutes watching the DX's pattern on the waterfall and figuring out exactly where he was pulling stations from in his split. he was working a pretty narrow range, maybe 3-4 khz wide, and was creeping up slowly. i just parked right at the top of where i thought he'd land next and waited. called once, got him first try.

the other thing i changed was dropping my audio a bit. i always assumed more drive = better but i was probably just splattering and annoying everyone including the DX op. cleaned up the signal and i think that helped too. anyway just sharing in case anyone else has been banging their head against this stuff like i was

yeah the listening thing is huge and most people skip it entirely. ive watched guys jump into a pileup within like 30 seconds of tuning across the DX station and they wonder why they never get through. the good ops working the other end, especially on a dxpedition, they can hear a clean signal in a pileup way easier than people think — the problem is everyone's transmitting on top of each other constantly and there's almost never a gap.

the other trick that works for me is timing your call to end just slightly before the DX stops transmitting so your call is sitting there in the clear for a half second before everyone else piles back in. takes some practice to get the feel for it but once you do it becomes kind of automatic. also second or third call in a row rarely works, if you don't get through in two or three tries move your vfo a bit and try a different spot in the split rather than just hammering away on the same freq.

the audio/drive thing catches a lot of people out. i had a buddy who was running his mic gain way too hot for years and couldn't figure out why he rarely got called back on sideband. someone finally told him to back it off and it was like night and day. on pileups especially the DX op is dealing with a wall of noise and a clean signal that's not distorted actually stands out. doesnt have to be the loudest just has to be readable.