so ive been chasing 3Y0 and a few other rare ones for a while now and honestly the pileup thing has been killing me. i run a K3 into a 3el yagi at about 45ft, so its not like im barefoot into a dipole, but i was still getting absolutely nowhere on some of these big DXpeditions. just calling and calling and never getting through.

what finally started working for me - and i know this sounds obvious but i wasnt really doing it - is actually listening to where the DX station is coming back before i even transmit once. like really listening for 5-10 minutes before i even key up. i started noticing patterns. some ops work strictly up 5, some wander all over the place, some tend to come back to the high end of the split and then drift down as the pileup thins. once i figured out where they were actually listening i'd park just above or below wherever they'd just worked and wait.

also started using a much shorter call. instead of giving my full callsign twice i just send it once, clean, at maybe 25-28wpm if the DX op is running fast. i think i was just blending into the noise by being too long. and i stopped calling right when the DX finishes - waited maybe half a beat so i wasnt buried in the initial surge.

anyway went 4 for 6 on my attempts last weekend which felt pretty good compared to my old batting average. curious what other people do, especially if you're not running a kilowatt

yeah the listening thing is huge and honestly most people skip it completely. ive watched guys just start hammering their callsign the second they tune across a pileup without even knowing what mode the DX is running split or how far up. then they wonder why nobody comes back to them.

one thing id add is timing relative to propagation. if youre on the wrong side of the grey line youre fighting physics no matter how good your technique is. ive had better luck sometimes just waiting 20 mins and trying again when the path tightens up a bit. also on 17 and 12m the pileups are sometimes way thinner than 20 even for the same entity, so if i really need a contact i try those bands first before i go fight on 20m.

the partial call thing works too btw. lot of DX ops will come back to a partial and then you just confirm. cleaner than blasting your whole call twice in a crowd.

this is something i genuinely struggle with still. im running about 100w and a wire antenna so maybe im just outgunned on the really rare stuff but i did get ZL9 last year so its not impossible. i think my biggest problem is i get impatient and just start spamming my call which probably makes things worse not better. gonna try the listen-first approach you described