Handling the pileup -by PG5M

Every operator, who handles a pileup does this based on his own experience, knowledge and training. That is the reason why it takes different techniques to work a DX-station. I will try to explain my policy and practice in working the pileup during my expeditions and in particular the ST2X operation.

Since I’m not running expeditions or contests regularly, I first need to catch up and adjust myself to work the pileup again. On the other hand, the ST2X pileups were quite heavy at certain times, which needed other techniques from my side.

I normally start working split as soon as possible. So in the ST2X case only one or two QSO:s were made transceive before switching to split operation. During most of my former operations, I worked just a few kHz up but now the pileups were so fierce that I had to spread the crowd a little bit more. However, I did not want to cause too much trouble on the bands and limited myself to a maximum of 5 kHz up.

Normally I try not to change my split frequency constantly as this will reduce the QSO-rate. This means working for some time on the same split frequency and then change a bit up or down and remain for some time on that spot.

This worked quite well many years back, but with the introduction of the packet clusters with the possibility of announcing the listening frequency of the DX station, it takes only a short moment before many stations are calling on exactly the same frequency. So this calls for other techniques from the DX station to keep up to speed. So as long as the number of callers is moderate, this works fantastic.

In general I prefer not to use a small CW filter but listen on the SSB filter. This creates a broad spectrum of audio signals from which you can select a station based on the pitch that peaks best for reasons I cannot explain (some time high, some times low). This also makes it possible to switch instantly to another pitch without turning the VFO. This practice works to a certain level. When the pileups became too fierce I had to use the CW (250 Hz) or DSP filter (60 Hz) which needed constant tuning and slows down the QSO rate. Working fast can help to avoid the building up of too many callers on the same spot. After some time, I always switched back to the SSB filter to see if that worked well again.

Another category of callers seem to have a different approach. They chose a fixed spot in the 5 kHz up segment and simply call and wait until I come across them. I know that some of them have spent quite some time before being successful.

In order to achieve a high QSO rate, one should show the audience how the game has to be played in order to be eligible for a contact. This requires the DX station to clearly show how the work is done and even more importantly, to do this consequently. My practice is to call a station, exchange the reports and conclude the contact with R TU. This is the sign that the crowd can call again. In case a station makes a correction on his/her call during the exchange of reports, I will repeat the corrected call sign followed by R TU.

Once I have started to work a station, I’m committed to finalize that QSO. This sometimes leads to continuous requests to QRX and standby in order to complete the QSO. As a result, we lose time and the opportunity to give others a chance but most importantly, we are able to complete a QSO that was initiated and it shows all the other that it was useless to interfere or try to steal a QSO. In other situations I had to ask the Europeans to standby to give JA, VK/ZL or US a chance. On a few occasions I was about to stop the operation for a while due to the lack of cooperation, but in general I’m really quite satisfied with the cooperation of the European stations. The problem was that I knew that I worked 80% Europe and had to give a chance to the rest, but the audience didn’t know this.