so ive been chasing ZL7 Chatham Island for like two years now and last saturday there was a small DXpedition active on 17m and i finally got through after about 45 minutes of trying. wanted to share what actually worked because i tried a bunch of stuff before something clicked.

first 20-25 minutes i was doing what everyone does, just calling on their freq or close to it and getting nowhere. the op was working split, listening up 2 to maybe 5 or so. i noticed he kept coming back to stations that were calling slightly after the tail of his transmission, not on top of each other. so i started timing it that way and also moved up to about 3.5 over his announced listening range because that part of the pile seemed thinner.

also cut my call down. i was sending my full callsign twice every time which in retrospect is just dumb in a big pileup, the op already knows his own call so calling DE [mycall] [mycall] just eats time. switched to single call, short, clean. got picked up within a few more cycles after that.

one thing i keep reading about is the whole frequency agility thing where you move around in the split window dynamically but honestly i dont have a great feel for how to do that without just causing more QRM. anyone have a better method for reading where the op is actually fishing vs where everyone thinks he is?

yeah the tail-ending thing is real and i think a lot of people dont figure it out until theyve worked a bunch of pileups. the op needs to hear the end of your call clearly and if youre stepping on his last dit youre already dead. timing is honestly more important than power in most situations, at least on the upper HF bands.

on your question about reading the split window, what i do is just listen for a full minute or two before i even key up. most ops will have a pattern even if they dont announce it. some guys walk up the band slowly, some jump around, some plant themselves in one spot. if you can figure out where they came back two or three times in a row thats probably their comfort zone. thats where i try to sit, maybe 100-200 hz above the cluster of callers there.

also depends a lot on propagation. on 17m with a decent opening the pile can be enormous and the op might be hearing a wall of noise, so anything that makes your signal stand out tonally or timing-wise helps. i run about 500w into a 3el yagi and even then it aint guaranteed. worked a ZL7 myself a few years back, took me the better part of an afternoon.

nice one getting through. chatham is a tough one from most of NA depending on the opening.

the thing about shortening your call is so underrated, i feel like new guys especially just hammer their callsign over and over and it buries everything. heard an interview with a DXpedition op once who said in a massive pileup he basically listens for fragments and builds up a callsign over a couple transmissions sometimes. so if your call is distinctive or has a unique ending sequence you might actually benefit from just sending the last two or three characters and letting him ask for more. risky but ive had it work on rare ones.

also dont sleep on band changes. ive busted into piles on 12m or 10m when the main pile was on 20 just because the opening was there for like 20 minutes and almost nobody was trying up there. requires watching the cluster and kinda knowing propogation patterns for the path which takes a while to learn but pays off.