[Elecraft] The P3 Effect

[Bill Frantz]

I use the P3 to find an open spot. My best use was during the 
NAQP RTTY contest when I discovered that a station from the my 
last-uncontacted state (N1NK) was always beating me to the top 
of the pileups. He Was tuning up, so I found a spot with the P3 
just above where we were working and started calling CQ. He 
called me and I have LotW and a card confirmations. Thanks N1NK.


I would like to hear what digital DXpedition operators think 
about how to work pileups and how to behave in pileups. Some CW 
operators have just said they use a wide bandwidth, and it seems 
from looking at my P3 that CW callers tend to spread out, so an 
operator can use the pitch of the CW to separate stations in his 
or her head. Frequently you can hear several SSB signals on top 
of each other, and hopefully tease out at least a part of a call 
sign and ask for it.

With digital, if several stations are transmitting on top of 
each other nobody's transmissions will decode. Is there anything 
we as callers can do to raise the QSO rate of the DX, which is 
to everyone's advantage? TX5K's digital QSO numbers for are a 
lot lower than for CW and SSB, and I don't think it is only that 
they spent more hours on the air in CW and SSB than in digital. 
It seemed when I was monitoring them their QSO rate was lower in 
digital. Would PSK31 do better with it's narrower bandwidth than 
and more room to spread out than RTTY? There is no end to the questions.

Cheers - Bill, AE6JV

On 3/9/13 at 9:30 AM, mike.flowers at gmail.com (Mike Flowers) wrote:

>Yes, that was my experience on Conway Reef last year.   I could only work a
>given RX frequency for a couple of Qs before having to hunt for a clearer
>call and start again.   I began to notice that the weaker signals that I
>could copy tended to be on clearer frequencies, so they would be my guide to
>where to start again.    It seemed to work pretty well as I did a fellow who
>said he was running 1W on 20M SSB.   I think he was from the level of
>excitement in his voice.
>
>I've had really good luck working DX by calling at the upper edge of the
>pileup.    As the DX op I would often just go 'up' to the upper edge to find
>a clear call, and I think a lot of other DX ops do the same when the pileups
>become a roaring wall of noise.
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