[DX] Does anyone still run barefoot?

[n4kg@juno.com]

I respectfully DISAGREE with the random jump philosophy of pileup management.  To my mind, that punishes the guys who KNOW what is going on (i.e. how to spot and determine a pattern) and turns it into nothing more than a big lottery.  As a general rule, I REFUSE to participate in such nonsense and come back later when it won't be necessary to waste so much time calling randomly.  

I noticed that one recent DXpedition operator was taking roughly one minute to find a new station for each contact.  That translated to 60-80 QSO's per hour. TOP operators can work around 300 Q's per hour on CW and 400 Q's hour on SSB.  They don't get those rates by randomly jumping around in the pileup.

The FASTEST way is for the DX operator to take stations on the same frequency which minimizes the length of time it takes to pick out a new station, until the pileup gets too big to copy anybody.  This is not just my opinion, it has been expressed to me by some of the TOP contest and DXpedition operators who are friends of mine.

Tom  N4KG  (Long time contester and all band DXer)





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