As my activations are usually on weekdays so I seldom get the crazy pile-ups that happen at weekends, and the S2S chances are somewhat lower, too. My CW isn’t great, and there have been a few occasions in my recent activations when it’s taken many minutes to complete a QSO at least partly because other chasers were getting in the way ( for instance, see this post and replies ). I do listen out for QRP and S2S chasers, but in my limited experience the callers who cause trouble are also ones who don’t listen to requests giving partial calls or other limits that should exclude them. It seems my options in that situation are to:
- Try to work other callers while ignoring them, and hope they get the message
- QSY and pick up the callers who’re listening on the new QRG (or start working with a small split…)
- Send them NIL and hope they go away
- Work them to get them out of the way (and then, maybe, not log them)
With CW a small change in frequency can make a big difference. Just a matter of remembering that in the heat of an activation, and choosing the second rather than the first…