Topband: Nebraska IS DX!

[Bill Hohnstein KØHA]

I obviously haven't been near as active on the top band this year as I 
have been in the past.  I've beening doing other things this season like 
copying two LW/MF beacons from Greenland last night on 258 and 
331 kHz.  The so-so contest conditions helped foster my apathy.
The first night I spent about an hour in the search and pounce mode 
for DX stations and another hour CQing.  The second day I think that 
I came as close to I ever will without going to a strange land to know 
what it's like to be the rare DX station.  Nebraska must have been rare 
in the contest, because for almost an hour I knew what it was like to:
  #1  Have an untold number of stations calling you and not even be able
to make out a single letter of one call.
  #2  You finally get a call and come back to someone and none of the
callers could hear who you were responding to.
  #3  You repeat the call that you heard and five other people come back
to you, none of them having a call anyway near that which you responded to.
  #4  You repeat the call again and now the proper station comes back
and you're down to three other callers (on a receiver set for narrow
selectivity--who knows how many others are calling outside of that window).

I'm not sure how long I'd be able to hold up while at a rare DX country
where this sort of thing goes on for days or weeks.  I was cutting the
selectivity of my receiver back to 100 - 200 Hz and listening up and down
a bit.  But, I never got away from the above effects until I got the pileup
down to a manageable size...
I now have better respect for those on DXpeditions and those that get 
fed up with the situation after so long.  And, I've learned how to be a 
better pileup caller in the future...

73,  Bill     K0HA