How I handle a pile-up

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How I handle a pile-up

Every operator that handles a pile-up does it 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 operating practice in working the pile-up 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 pile-up again. On the other hand, the ST2X pile-ups 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 1 or 2 QSO were made transceive and then switching to split operation. During most of my former operations I worked just a few kHz up but now the pile-ups 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 constantly change my split frequency as this will reduce the QSO-rate. These means working for some time on the same split frequency and next 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 stations, it takes only a short moment before many stations calling on exactly the same frequency. So this is calling 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.

Using filters

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 pile-up 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 tried to switch back to the SSB filter and see if that worked well again.
An other 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 with this tactic

The right rhythm

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 show clearly how the work is done and even more important, 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.

Cooperation

Once I have started to work a station, I’m committed to finalize that QSO. This sometimes led to continuous requests to QRX and standby in order to complete the QSO. As a result, we lost time and the opportunity to give others a chance but most important, we were able to complete a QSO that was initiated and shows all the other that it was useless to interfere or steal a QSO. In other situations I had to ask the Europeans to standby and 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 about 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.