so i've been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just do local stuff and some casual SSB but last weekend there was a pretty rare one on 17m, think it was from somewhere in central africa, cant remember exactly which entity but it was a real pileup situation, like wall to wall signals the whole time

i tried for almost two hours and got nowhere. i was running about 100w into a dipole up maybe 30 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what i've got. what i noticed was most guys were just screaming their callsign over and over on the same frequency as the DX station and it sounded like total chaos. i tried doing that for a while and nothing.

then i started listening more carefully and realized he was working split, like 5 up or somewhere in there, and most people in the pileup werent even on his listening frequency they were just calling on his tx freq which i guess means they had zero chance. once i figured that out i tuned up and started listening for where he was actually pulling calls from

i noticed he kept coming back to stations in a certain part of the frequency spread, seemed like maybe 3-4 khz up from where most people were piling. so i parked there and after maybe 20 minutes he came back to me. i couldnt believe it honestly

my question is, is that actually a real technique or did i just get lucky? and how do you guys figure out where the DX op is listening when you cant hear both sides of the qso? also curious if there are any other tricks for breaking pileups with modest stations, i dont have a big antenna farm or an amp

yeah what you did is basically the right approach, you kind of stumbled onto what the experienced dx chasers do on purpose. listening before transmitting sounds obvious but probably 80% of the pileup isnt doing it. the split thing is huge, so many people call on the dx frequency and wonder why they never get through, theyre literally invisible to the dx station

as for figuring out where hes listening when you cant hear both sides, a few things that help. first just watch where he comes back to and try to read the partial callsigns he gives, sometimes you can figure out if hes favoring a certain part of the spread. also some ops have patterns, like they'll work up from 5 to 10 and then reset, or theyll stay at a certain offset for a while before moving. takes a bit of practice to pick up on but once you start noticing it you can anticipate it

with 100w and a dipole youre not completely out of the game, the timing matters more than raw power a lot of the time. throwing your call in right as the pileup thins a tiny bit, like right after he completes a qso, can be the difference. also dont tail-end, its bad practice and most good dx ops hate it

clublog and dx summit sometimes have spots with the split offset listed so check those before you even start calling

nice one on getting through, that actually takes more patience than most people have. i remember my first pileup i just gave up after like 20 minutes because i thought my radio was broken or something lol

one thing i'd add that nobody told me for a long time is to really listen to how the dx op is working the pile. some of them work by region, like theyll say EU only or NA only for stretches, so if youre calling when its not your turn youre just wasting your time and annoying everybody. also some ops work by number, like theyll say only 4s or 7s, so again just listen

honestly the modest station thing is real and theres no magic fix for it but picking the right band conditions helps more than anything. if the band is marginal youre probably not getting through with 100w but if conditions are good you can punch above your weight. ive worked some pretty rare ones with 100w and a wire, it just takes more patience