My frustration with working skip...

It seems every time there is good working conditions I hear people talking local to each other afterwards reeling off the list of contacts they've made all over the place.   How are they making these contacts.   Pretty much 90% of all the CQ calls I put out are unanswered.   90% of the people I call back to when they are coming in 5/9+  respond to another station, even with multiple attempts;   this is not helped by those who just steamroller in with their callsigns before waiting for the QRZ.    

It seems like there is a very special type of sporadic E working today.   Two way for everyone else, one way for me.    Had a session on the home base in the day, managed one into Denmark, and one Germany.   Been out on the hills this evening, finishing up on the home base.  It has been utterly futile.   In the meantime, there are people up and down the country working North America etc,  and I've not even managed to get a single shout into Europe this evening.  This seems to happen time and time again.  Are these people making these contacts all running yagi beams or just telling lies?  I always do well on UK nets and get compliments on my mod and signal with both the radios which I use.    I realise that going up on a hill isn't necessarily an advantage working skip, I just went out because is was a nice evening.    I'm getting to the point of giving up on trying to work skip, it just seems to be a complete waste of time.

It can be difficult, especially if they aren't hearing you as well as the other stations.
In that circumstance iv had some luck calling CQ DX, HZ253, area 43 South Australia calling, any stations copy QSY ch 36 ( or Whatever channel that I've found to be clear ) often I'll get a few followers, and others find you quickly if your close to the call ch.
I heard a power station yesterday banging my needle, he could hardly hear me and I was pushing 100w he was only 80km away

Hi Chris,

I feel your pain mate, it can all be frustrating.
(I'm still currently without transmit on my HF rig so can hear all this lovely 'skip' but can't work it!)


I would say the biggest part of working DX more than anything else is 'patience'.

I've known guys lash out on 'bigger & better' radios, antennas, coax and linears  only to be ultimately rewarded with the same frustration you're experiencing. Can be a real kick in the teeth.

You've been making contacts as shown by your Danish and German examples so you know your setup is working and you can get out there, so in all reality you should be giving yourself a pat on the back. If you personally reward yourself with the good feeling of making those DX contacts it'll far outweigh the failed CQ's.


If you're working the old 555 then just remember that every man and their dog will be calling on that frequency when conditions are up.....all trying to shout over the top of each other and often not knowing each other is there! One direction skip is common in that you hear the DX station but not all the 'local' or your own countries transmissions. Think of the poor operator at the other end who is being barraged by a cacophony of operators all shouting back at once, they'll only be able to pick out the call they can hear above everything else.

I rarely make a call on the 555 or even try responding to a big gun station CQ knowing that happens. Instead I will flick up and down the frequencies around the triple five and see if I can catch someone intelligent enough to be putting out a CQ elsewhere. Responding to those calls can often reward you with an easier contact. The same is true for calling out a CQ, try it away from the main calling frequency making several CQ's as there may be someone out there utilising the same method of 'scanning' up and down for a contact.

There's no point making a CQ with a QSY instruction on the 555 unless you're a big gun station but take advantage of those scenarios. If everyone runs off to the new QSY frequency then the 555 will suddenly be a little quieter and that's when you can jump in with your CQ and stand a better chance.

Always worth listening to the conditions first as well. If you have France one second, Germany the next then suddenly Spain is being heard you know that conditions are hopping all over the place and although exciting it's much harder to work. Probably best to wait for more stable conditions where you tend to hear one countries CQ's more than anything else.

There's that 'patience' thing again. 


You can of course go all 'big gun', buy the 'best' radio, linears and a dirty big beam squirting RF in your direction of interest. That doesn't always work but when it does you can find it's like shooting fish in a barrel, which although exciting at first can soon become a bit monotonous. If the excitement comes from how many countries you've worked what do you do when you've worked them all? Work them again? How many times can you do that before becoming bored again?


I always find when something becomes frustrating I walk away, give it up for a bit and maybe come back to it at a later time. The frustrated feeling quickly leaves you and you're in a better frame of mind when you come back to it.

Congratulate yourself on your achievements and don't muster on your apparent 'failures'.....

It'll make you far happier. 



Anyway, that's maybe/probably all waffle but it was in the spirit of helping a fellow Charlie Tango member and radio enthusiast. Hope it helps even a little.

All the best,
Victor

A lot of what I could offer has been said above already.

Most QSOs I have had have been been initiated by going back to other's CQ calls quickly, or QSKing into them near the end of an existing convo. Only a small percentage have been from me putting out a CQ, and hardly any from a CQ on the 555.

If you're using the channels around the 555 then have a listen on the 0s (+5KHz). Not all "CBs" can get to them.. less people using the frequencies = better chance of getting through.

Great tip there on the 0's Neal.

Also, try dropping down to mid-band or low-band and calling CQ.......the skip will be there too ! A lot of people seem to think that T5 is the only frequency to DX on but there are plenty of others lower down which will usually be less crowded so you will have a better chance of being heard.

Another nice tip there Phil.  

I think I've had my most enjoyable 'DX' QSO's down on the mid-band Euro frequencies, often with FM and low power, (great when the conditions are right for that! ) Sometimes it's just nice to have a conversation than the typical "5-9 QRZ".

Some great advice been given.

Thanks for all the advice everyone.   I do like the idea of calling on another channel.   And SangueG says, I have rarely made contacts from calling CQ on T5.    I made another contact with Denmark later in the evening with a nice chap called Torben, ad a nice long conversation.   A long and pleasant chat is worth 20 x "five by nine, you're in the log".

When Scotland, North of England and Ireland is coming in, I've made some great contacts just QSKing on the muppets.   WHen I was in Cornwall last week, I worked a fair few stations in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria from Lands End.


I hope my initial post isn't too whiney but there are times I wonder why I'm bothering with this hobby.   But I will take all of the above advice on board.

Just keep at it 26uk81,Have a flick around the bands and listen.
Your be surprised at that distance voice at the back of the box will be able to hear you a lot of the time.Yesterday I was chatting with Glasgow and his signal was better then most around me.(And this was on UK Fm too).
The propagation is in and out at the moment and the bands are open but it just takes time and ignore the Italian singing with the echo mic..lol
In the past 24 hours I’ve managed to Dx with Glasgow,Germany 13 pt 130,Norway,The Netherlands,Italy and even Copenhagen to name a few and on different bands..Stick at it
Tom. CT-4029

Your doing it wrong or you have a problem with your setup. Ignore the people on nets giving you reports its pointless and often not even accurate. A lot of homebased stations on nets blag or bullshit their contacts in a vain effort to cover up the fact they are deaf as a post. The station asks them something simple like their name and more often than not reply with one of three things:

1: Ive suddenly got a bit of noise im losing you
2: Im pleased with that one ill hand it back to the chair
3: Great contact wont hog it hand it back to "insert name here" 

Not the correct reply, and easy from afar for people to realise they couldn't hear diddly squat. Yet in todays daft world people wont tell them the truth in that they have actually just had a no contact. 

For "Dx" i think you mean perhaps Eu stations, if you want to try and work some off the T5, put a call in and give a QSY at the same time. After of course making sure beforehand that the QSY Frq is clear for you, dont call on T5 and expect to hear anyone come back to you if its busy. You can do it but its hard to hear for obvious reasons if anyone comes back to you, you then have the ball ache of trying give a QSY on a busy Frq. Your just making it harder work than it needs to be and creating more QRM for everyone else. Put a call in, give a QSY, move, start calling CQ. If that doesnt work try listening and pouncing on stations like some else suggested. With conditions like they are now it shouldn't be hard to work EU countries at all when /P.

What is your setup when you go out portable. i cant see anyone asking you this yet.

Starship I do exactly the same thing,When the Mids is crazy with station upon station keying over each other or USB seems to hard to work.
That S low band and the one above Low,Just seem to be so much quieter and your able to communicate so much better to each other.
Nothing worse then calling out to a Romanian station only to get an Italian reply..
It’s not all about 27.555 USB

CT4029

hi Chris, I feel you pain, but stick with it and it will turn out right. I've made several hundred qso,s in the last year and never had a CQ call on t5 answered . I only use about 50 watts so can be hard to play with the big boys. As well most using a killerwat and yes meant to spell it like that, are using beams and HF rigs. Some really good advice given. But try this if you can, try through the day when its quieter on the band and try search and pounce.listening on 10m,if you like what you hear, get your foundation licence and work that band through the summer months  .I am a convert from 11m to 10m now
good luck
mark

5Watts QRP, FT991 but radio really irrelevant, /P last week waiting for conditions over to the west: 

329SD010 Thomas Czech republic
13TW666 Alex Leipzig Germany
30AT210 Raul Saville Spain`
56LR007 Pasi Kanta Hame Finland
21WR01 Roger Sweden
161RC103 Pawel Poland
14SD515 Fabien Nouvelle Aquitai France
45CI121 Philip Vojvadina Serbia
233CI073 Cosmin Deva Romania
31SD175 Carlos Algarve Portugal.

2 Answered a CQ call after putting a QSY out on T5 that they may or may not of heard, the others i pounced. Its not just about the power, beams or radio.

I'm going to respect Smudger's slightly slap-wrists (technically) weapon of choice because it's being used in a sane, moderate manner and actually has a lot of reasons why when you use it in a QRP context, complements what you're doing given it's a really fine Rx and has good effect SP and DSP functions and quite frankly when set up right, walks over every export/CB multimode rig for it's emission purity and that's out of the box.

Although I have some early CEPT FM gear (HH and mobile manpacked) and some varied UK and pre-legal stuff knocking around (the pre-legal stuff was destined to go on 10m but I never got around to it after getting the AT) , for Dxing in the same spirit as Smudger I'd use my FT portable (which is QRP by default) or indoors I'd use the 747Gx turned way way down to QRP levels rather than waste money and time making a sow's ear pretty performance wise - been there, learnt from it and about all I'll do optimised on CB gear is make em clean as they'll get and not bother for someone's gear beyond that).

And given what some notorious old names from Central Europe were using/abusing back in my DX CB days, Smudger's restrained use is pure sanity of exploiting a good bit of kit.

As for seeming to not be heard - well that's a whole big can of worms soup with a few pit vipers in there for added bite. All I'll say is, more hear you than will ever bother to reply, because if you're not 'part of the crowd' they recognise you'll be disregarded, if you do anything vaguely radio pro/ham in your conduct, they ignore you as a 'try hard' loser to be ignored or stamped on - and given their butchery of technique is often a parodied parrot sketch interpretation of ham radio and old military RT practise done badly in many cases, they should hang heads in shame.

If you're in the wrong region that's flavour of the hour/day/month, the big hitters and the real 'CB Pro' try hards will ghost you.

You experience some degrees of that when you try DX on the popular ham HF segs especially during a contest or unforseen lift, so it's not always a CB Dxers' hell either.

Employ an infinite patience approach, treat it with the seriousness you choose, but never forget it's just a game/challenge that's more a test of your patience, determination and breaking point than anything else.

Don't be afraid to just use any available frequency you're allowed to use, just pick a quiet one and go do open CQ and CQDX calls - the conventions of what's used as call channels and frequencies aren't set in stone as for x purpose alone, likewise the others non-calling are just guideline usage and convention but NOT absolute exclusive.

So, using ham side as a comparative example on 10m, I can use actually any frequency on a y mode in the band as defined as I see fit - it's a gentlemen's agreement and guideline that certain sub allocations are NB phone use, some NB TG etc and some all mode and some guideline provision where all modes up to n bandwidth are recommended, it doesn't define what you can encapsulate - so encapsulating in-the-clear FreeDV on SSB in any area where SSB is in an acceptable bandwidth usage is perfectly valid.

So, returning to 11m, read the terms of the virtual license schedule (since you don't have an issued license these days) and be creative - if it's not prohibited your intended way of operating and where within the allocation and you can use it sympathetically with due consideration then just give it a bloody shot until you get bored of trying or the unaddressed or grey area becomes addressed in the governing schedule.

And for the benefit of those who'll deny there's a governing schedule of limitations for CB, total BS - you're just too ignorant, blind or self centred to realise that all defined radio user services have such entities you're required to work within.

Anyway, to the OP, hang in there - be ingenious, creative and be different enough to stand out for being notable and you'll find people pick up in you, and sadly many more who'd happily try to trash your efforts for being a 'try hard' in their eyes.

Even in my CB days, sometimes you just were better to shut down and try again at some random quiet time or just resume another day - it's not gonna kill to get there eventually in an enjoyable way, but when you let frustration and seemingly being invisible get to you, you're poisoning your otherwise enthusiasm for it. Don't be poisoning your playground because others drive you nuts

Smudger wrote:

5Watts QRP, FT991 but radio really irrelevant, /P last week waiting for conditions over to the west: 

329SD010 Thomas Czech republic
13TW666 Alex Leipzig Germany
30AT210 Raul Saville Spain`
56LR007 Pasi Kanta Hame Finland
21WR01 Roger Sweden
161RC103 Pawel Poland
14SD515 Fabien Nouvelle Aquitai France
45CI121 Philip Vojvadina Serbia
233CI073 Cosmin Deva Romania
31SD175 Carlos Algarve Portugal.

2 Answered a CQ call after putting a QSY out on T5 that they may or may not of heard, the others i pounced. Its not just about the power, beams or radio.

Well done on those contacts with that power level. Recognise a few of those from my listenings and couple in my log book. Whilst some are heavy hitters, I know Alex was running relatively low power too and his antennas are nice but not monsters. My contact with him was just good timing in my answering and the conditions playing a major factor.

Chris, I am sure if you take on board everyone's suggestions and just stay relaxed about it you'll make some great e skip contacts in the future. I haven't made contact with any very long distant stations (out of Europe) from my home yet since coming back to this. E.g. I have heard some local DXers making contacts with 3 divs, but I haven't managed it myself. But I'm totally relaxed about it. When I do finally manage a contact I know it will be a good feeling and memorable. Keep at it 

You do get days on 11m where you wonder what the hell is going on. Many factors could play into it... your set up, e layer paths, rx stations noise levels, beams in use (you might be on the side or back). Skip favours one direction over the path than the other and simply more efficient paths to other destinations than to you... you might land an S6 and others S9 and +10 over for others.

Also don't discount someone not wanting to work the 9th UK station for the evening. It happens, I have done it myself.

Exceptions aside and there are many - correctly set up 1/2 or 5/8 wave antenna as high as possible from the ground - 100Watts - it will be hard not to make e layer dx on 11m when E layer is charged reasonably.

Lesser set ups can work as well. Prop is a strange thing and some days the planets align in a way that it just does not favour your QTH, radiation angle and RX situations of counterpart stations.

I have definitely been out and wonder what the hell is going on hearing loads and making almost zero contacts.

I have largely mitigated all this with a almost dead cert euro hop setup over the years, conditions allowing of course and sometimes they don't allow.. but that takes time and effort and some cash.... and still not using a beam.

Every one of us has those days and they are disheartening... just get back on the horse, one way to make no contacts at all is not being on the radio.

As previously hinted at :-

Some of the best DX hits you'll really feel achievement over are those you get the conditions are low or very unstable.

It's very good to just get out there and bang away for a few hours even when the band seems dead - you never know, try a few calls and sit back, listen and there's a good shot that you'll hear another blind optimistic just giving it a shot. So, if you get chatting or get a few exchanges passed, it may set no records or be notably - but you and other were still working and got contacts when the low hanging fruit seeking 'high activiy' mob just didn't bother. In fact, over on 10/6/4m, that's often the case as they only really get 'phone' active when conditions are on a high - but true DX working is as much about making the best you can do with whatever the conditions chuck your way.

Just as my longest low power 70cms contact came out of nowhere literally for all of ten secs where I happened to put out a call on an antenna far less than ideal, and thanks to a SpeedBird (British Airways) flight in the far near horizon distance, I got a considerable aircraft reflection hop that got me into Norway on glow worm ERP. Sure, SNR was awful, even by usual FM standards of weak SIG reception, but it lasted long enough for a rapid exchange followed by a QSL exchange a few days later. It was a case of it can technically happen, but never by looking for it - the dice were in my favour that day.

So hang in there - even years of bugger all success will still teach you something positive and if it don't get you trying out anything you can imagine to optimise refine your setup, you miss the best bit of the side benefits of DX working - the journey and side adventures and sub plots of the story.

I DX without using t5....
26.285 usb,27.515 lsb or just pick a freq,listen to see if it's free then put out some calls..

Patience reaps great rewards and while my set up is decent enough I rarely use more than 50w...

Sam..

*thinks* if you need, on HF, 50W at the Tx, you're doing it all wrong. I'm not saying that in a dyed-in-wool QRP op mindset, but in general.

Even under the worst conditions you'll ever encounter outside of a nuclear winter or facing extreme malicious frequency blocking through repetitive Pulse based wideband high power transmission designed to disrupt/block comms, there's really no need for 50W Tx output on any HF allocation.

You see, whether working DX or not, it's merely a matter of best judgement of the most optimal selection of your available frequencies, using a mode with high readability/intelligibility even when SIG's are deep into the band noise floor, using the right filters to sharpen up a hopefully half decent receiver and optimising your outgoing audio for (phone operations) maximum clarity in the mode and using a mic/pre-eq or SP that captures your voice according to your voice characteristics (so a mic insert of the right response profile helps), feeds the FM/AM/SSB transceiver a best optimised injectable operator audio that sits comfortably within the bandwidth permitted by mode/emsison class appropriately.

That way, at the Tx end, you'll maximize how you get out with clarity - and clarity matters.

Then, post Tx output, use of the most optimal of your antennas - the one that best uses it's radiation pattern to fire at a usable low/mid/high angle for the wavelength/band in question - best being what puts most of the injected RF out in a pattern where it's quasi or actually directional or bidirectional in pattern and a healthy dose of patience and being able to still discriminate in-the-noise SIG's after many hours.

If you can meteor-scatter 'skip' or EME 'skip' using sub 100W on vhf/UHF, you have way better scope for achieving or being on the borders of usable DX ops on HF without trying to punch holes with RF like it was a hot iron.

Clearly your scope depends on means, practical limits and what bands/modes you're legitimately capable of using in practice, but there's always some DX scope to be found somewhere and you definitely don't need to be punching the ozone layer like a punch bag to get heard and maintain even a super short QSO that's barely more than a simple exchange worst case.

If you can get a respectable result on a mag loop/STL that's indoors, and you'll definitely not want to run power there, then it says a lot about how minimal things need be to Dx ready for when opportunity knocks or you blindly seek with optimism bordering on the crazy.

But Dx'ers always had a substantial crazy aspect to them, else they'd be like most and never go for getting the biggest window on the world they can hope to get.

An important factor to DX is literally using the better of a reduced set of mode choices. It's all pretty well documented, with professional use evidence to back it up, so I'll skip reinventing that wheel.

But I will highlight that narrower bandwidth DSB/SSB is a highly preferred choice (DSB, or double side band is the technical name for AM by function, since it occupies and uses both of the sidebands simultaneously), where AM as heard tends to softly descend towards near silence as the SIG weakens and if you use DSP trickery to 'boost' it by extraction and synthetic phased mirroring type techniques can restore clarity even when amplitude wise it's very indistinct (from an Rx side).

In SSB, where all the emitted energy is focused in either one of the sidebands, and uses a narrower bandwidth and notably more old world telephony restricted band spread of audio frequencies, and a suppressed carrier (fully or partially depending on which specific SSB emissions class is used). Now this highly narrowband SIG, even at very low levels as heard by the Rx, is still much more easy to discrimate with high intelligibility by man and machine (although the mk1 ear and brain combo is a better guesser under very poor conditions). Also, DSP trickery to lift the indistinct is much more effective in many cases Rx wise.

Then you're into DV modes (digital voice) where FreeDV and other proprietary commercial takes on the concept use psychoacoustic techniques to reduce the content similarly to how psycho acoustic compresson works so in analogue resolvable terms the audio sounds like a super low bit depth analogue recording with dropouts - where when correctly resolved it's more mono voice gradeMP3/Speex codec like with an SSB like tone but with a better reproduction of tonal range. The purer digital types simply send an encoded data TG transmission that's SSB like in BW (but narrower) which sounds a bit like anything using the end result of codec translation of C4FM/DMR TG data as heard raw. I say similar, in principle, as FreeDV and proprietary HF focused DV codecs use combination of coding and resulting translation to TG better suited to the much more conditions and propagation variable nature of HF.

Then at the top of the most bombproof you're talking pure TG for clarify and discrimination purposes. True, that's outside of CB scope (legally as is retrofit attempts at DV and use of data modes however you approach it), but it indicates how much simplicity of content both tonally and it's effective 'colour' matters - since ultimately, it's the mode which is clearer to resolve that's the ideal one.

But to make the best of it, in phone modes (voice), a big part of clarity is optimising your voice input to suit the tonal range of the mode and suitably applied dynamic compression and parametric eq use which neither overdrives nor under drives the audio in at the Tx. Now this part is achievable on CB, but please note your radios somewhat lack some of the ability to effectively translate the pre-processed audio as best they could and the limiters circuitry often (mostly) employed is best case barely fit for purpose by radio technology standards, so care and attention is required when feeding preprocessed optimised audio into the mic feed of the rig. You can overcook the input on any grade of rig, but most higher quality equipment has a halfway decent set of inline limiters and some inherent 'companding' to help reduce the impact to degrees.

But it all comes down, ultimately, to setting up to generate a transmission that's ultimately better resolved to be clear above the noise, a better SQ from the readability and intelligibility perspective whilst the SNR bounces like a demented yoyo on an amphet cocktail.

When you start to dig deep into the why's and how's, hang on to your magic carpet whilst you go headfirst into the rabbit hole...

Im really glad all thats well above my pay grade or i might be sitting reading stuff instead of enjoying the radio. I mean if i was that desperate enough to make contacts or alleged ones id just let my computer hammer out some FT8 for me giving me time to take in what youve just typed. Is that you Mark ?

@Smudger - no, not Mark here. As for all detailed outline of bandwidth/mode in Dx terms and mic/dsp/sp setup on phone ops, that's barely scratching the surface.

@all - ultimately, any TG mode will 'kick butt' over any analogue voice 'phone' mode for getting distance working - and the simpler the TG form the more resistant it is by default. Now you can argue that DV modes are pretty conditions and SIG strength resistant - but that's only because it's perceptual audio data of a psycho acoustic dynamic and frequency simplified nature (as per mp3 and ogg and speed etc) encapsulated into a TG form either by SSB (AFSK) or pure NB FSK depending on the actual DV mode.

DMR/DPMR/C4FM modes/DSTAR/NXDN etc use NB FSK vs say SSB carried ASFK carried over SSB mode used on FreeDV and similar proprietary modes. What they have in common despite being very different encapsulating types, is they exist in BW somewhere between that of SSB and actual CW on narrow voice modes and 'wide' (HQ) use SSB type bandwidth levels.

But they ultimately are more resolvable than FM & AM NB, over extremes of distance where FM SIG's are often buried deep in white noise and AM being marginally more resolvable at such depths of near nil resolvable levels. You can always tell the SQ of a DV transmission by how metallic is sounds and how it varies under poor SQ from metallic 4-bit sampled through to doing a pretty good 4-bit Dalek sample impression. If you've ever had to try to listen to a struggling cellphone call, you'll know what I mean by those SQ analogies.

What I hate about modern. TG trends is the habit (notable on FT8 ironically enough) of just banging away harvesting hair-breadth exchanges sufficient to create a log entry and nothing more. If people actually took the time to have proper QSO's on QSO-orientated TG modes, they'd have fair better understanding of why in practice they get as good as they do. That's why I refuse to use any TG mode regularly that's two second data exchange focused bar when I'm scoping conditions via WSPR.

Hahaha you nearly had me fooled. Then you started a new sentence and paragraph with the word "But" and that kind of puts us back in reality. 
All joking aside,,
Maybe you didn't realise but your in the section of the forum pertaining to Dx on 11mtr. This chap is having trouble making "SSB" "Dx" contacts "on 11mtr" and is getting frustrated.