so ive been chasing rare DX for probably 15 years now and last week i finally cracked what was honestly the most brutal pileup ive ever sat in, the 3Y0 operation that was on 17m around 1800z. i tried the usual stuff for like 45 minutes - full call, partial call, nothing. the op was clearly working split and running maybe 5-7 up and i kept throwing my whole callsign in and just getting buried.

what finally worked was switching to just sending the last two letters of my suffix. i know thats controversial and some guys hate it but i timed it so i was transmitting right as the op started his over and hit it maybe a half second after his final dit. took maybe 3 more attempts after that and he came back to me partial, i confirmed, done. first ever 3Y contact.

i run an IC-7610 into a 5el yagi at 55 feet so its not like im running a wet noodle, but that pileup was absolutely stacked. curious what techniques other people are actually using that work, not just theory stuff but what really works in practice when youre in a wall of signals

yeah the partial callsign thing is kind of a gray area depending on who you ask but honestly when a pile is that deep you do what works. the timing piece is huge and i think most people miss it - they just key up randomly throughout the op's gap and wonder why they never get picked. ive had good luck listening to a few complete QSOs first just to nail down the rhythm before i even try to transmit. some of the expedition ops have a very predictable cadence and once you lock onto it you can anticipate exactly when to drop your call in.

one thing that helped me a lot was cutting my keyer speed down a few WPM from what i normally run. sounds counterintuitive but in a pileup your signal has to be readable and a lot of guys crank speed trying to jam more info in. if the op mishears one letter youre done and have to start over. also - and i know this sounds obvious - make sure youre actually on the right split freq. ive watched guys on my panadapter hammering away 10kc away from where the op is listening and they have no idea

honest question - does running more power actually help in a situation like that or does everyone just end up louder together and it cancels out? im still kind of new to chasing DX and i have a KPA500 i could run but im not sure if cranking to 500w is gonna do anything useful or just make me part of the noise floor everyone else is already creating. i got stomped on the FT5 operation last year and never figured out why nothing i did worked