HI Matt
Well I think the pile ups on CW have shrunk and not grown compared to how they were 5 or more years ago. I don’t know what anyone else from “back in the day” who is still active on the mode thinks? I have resorted to working split on occasion as a few others (such as Christoph ON6ZQ) have, however I haven’t felt the need to do it for a few years now.
73 Phil
My activations don’t seem to be as manic as they were. I don’t see the pileups of a few years back. I’m hoping those days will return to give me something different to moan about. 
It was a successful activation, my first in quite a while (thanks to a house move and quite a bit else), and I’m clearly a little rusty. I did feel I could have worked quite a few more chasers in the time available if I could have picked calls out of the pile quicker, though.
Yes, I agree Phil, I remember working pile ups with my Rockmites 
The pile ups don’t seem anywhere near as bad as they were. I’ve also noticed it’s very hard to chase with QRP whereas a few years ago, I chased many SOTAs with my QRP rigs.
I’d say it was propagation rather than interest or activity that’s causing the drop in pile ups - hopefully they’ll be back again in several years.
73, Col
To a point yes. While I acknowledge some have learned here today, I tend to view these things as, “We read these posts, so we KNOW. Those who don’t follow along, are the problem children.”
Sharing and learning is good.
I totally agree Phil. Sometimes I struggle nowadays to get into double figures on 30m CW, whereas I had no problem getting twice that number some years ago. As to whether this affects the way the initial pile up is handled, I couldn’t say. There are still occasions where there are several stations netted precisely and I cannot get a callsign. … when this happens I tend just to monitor the frequency and after a while one caller will chip their call in. This works for me. I am happy to sit and wait. If the rate is less than one a minute, so be it.
As for split frequency working, personally I don’t feel that it is appropriate for SOTA working. The potential log is usually in the tens and not the hundreds experienced by an expedition station. It is better to allocate a little more time for activating and take it at a steady rate. I then feel I have done justice to those calling and if a few cannot wait to work me, then it is their responsibility, not mine.
73, Gerald
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I think the pile ups are still growing. Nonetheless, increasingly experienced CW activators are finding them easier to manage. I would offer the possibility that activator operating skills are increasing rather than pile ups diminishing.
Certainly I find CW activations much more easily manageable than I did 10 years ago - yet a look at my logs does not necessarily indicate lower QSO totals.
All the posts mentioning pileups not as big as 5years ago … Sunspot Max v sunspot min, simple.
Hi Rick,
That’s for sure, but you said your CW is yet a bit rusty and you probably did the best you could at this stage.
I remember I chased you at the very beginning of your activation and I believe I succeeded because I called you at your same speed. I’d say you were at about 16WPM and I remember many chasers in the pile-up were calling you much faster than your transmitting speed, so it wasn’t your fault not picking up their callsigns at a faster pace, but theirs for not adapting their speed to yours.
Don’t worry, for activating at the speed you are comfortable with and keep practising. Morse runner is a very good program for practising on dealing with pile-ups.
The good chasers will adapt to your speed and will make the QSO with you. The bad ones not adapting their speed to yours won’t and it will be their fault.
73,
Guru
I think there was something a little unusual about propagation last Wednesday; I got more of a pile-up for a mid-week afternoon activation with almost no alert time than I’d have expected, and they were almost all 599 (or would have been had they been calling one at a time). Guru is correct in saying some of the callers were replying a mite faster than I was calling, but with a repeat or three I generally expect to catch callsigns a bit faster than I’m calling.
There is more to CW than just knowing your letters and numbers. Working CW is a language of its own, including prosigns, protocol, common abbreviations, and even knowing what parts of the bands to operate on for the best success, since SOTA is mostly a QRP operation.
Ron, KI4TN
It’s about communicating, and one half of communicating is listening… 
Why, indeed?
In a pile up if I hear a partial call I simply send what I heard and a question mark or two…like if WA7JTM was calling me but I only got the TM, I send “TM??” once or twice, and that almost always works.
Option two: wait until everyone stops sending, more or less, and work the tailgater…the last guy to call. Costs u a little time, but not much.
Pete
WA7JTM
To get back to the reason I posted this, apart from blowing off steam, was that there are 2 types of chaser. There are chasers who want to have a successful chase and work with the activator and the pile-up to get their QSO. And there are those who will deliberately ignore the directed calls the activator makes and will just call. Or they tail-end the QSO before the tail-end is complete. They will call and call and call and call until the activator works them and they don’t care what “collateral damage” they do in the process of trampling over everyone else. We’re lucky because they are very, very rare in SOTA pileups and ten a penny in DX pileups.
Having discussed this with some other CW users, most of whom have vastly greater experience than I do and not just SOTA, all say when then hear one of these “special” chasers acting selfishly then they note the call and will email them later and ask them to explain why they called when they were not being called, or when they did not match the partial call or why they called from nearby in Europe when the call was DX only etc. Email them, put them on the spot to explain their anti-social operation. Then when you get the grovelling reply you can laugh out loud at the feeble explanations. “I couldn’t hear you properly”, “I thought you were calling me”, “that was a pirate not me”! The stations who do this are always people with a significant investment in amateur radio in either station, operating or years licenced. I have never come across recent CW ops acting badly.
It’s always time-served stations that do anti-social operating and that is because it is a learned behaviour. Far too many people will work such an anti-social operator to get rid of them so they can work the stations they really want to work. Thus the anti-social operator sees reward in being belligerent and selfish and will continue to act that way until called out. Not me and I’ve been this way for some time. I’ll QSY or QRT before I give these stations the reward to their actions if I cannot control my pileup especially if I have my 4 QSOs.
I think this has happened to me, or the chasers don’t listen and think I called them when I’ve actually sent a different call.
Hi Andy,
I am putting my hand up for not knowing the appropriate use of KN. And I’m putting my hand up for not wanting to know it or a host of other prosigns.
There are two reasons.
The interpretation of many prosigns is not universally agreed upon in the AR community.
I can get by fine with sending a partial call followed by ? or just ?.
I had the pleasure of a 3 x ZL pile up a few days ago. That’s as crowded as it gets over here. When ? or ZL3? or whatever fails a little plain language seems to work. I have only once been forced off “my frequency” and that was by a station who could not hear me. It did not matter what I sent.
The situation is different “over there” because you have a vastly bigger population of CW operators. That necessitates dealing with more pests.
I recommend a trip to VK or ZL for hassle free activations. If you have trouble getting that lucky anvil through customs or past excess baggage rules we can loan one to you for your stay. Wrought steel of course, none of your nasty cast iron things. Is a small 75 kg one about right?
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Hy Andy,
I’am sure, CW operators know about the KN sign !
Good luck and don’t give up .
In recent years, the development of external receivers and Morsea code reception software has resulted in the emergence of stations using it in SOTA.
Reception with “not your remote receiver” causes considerable delays and thus delayed reactions. This is very annoying because such stations usually use great powers. They don’t hear themselves, but they hope that the activator will hear them … Similarly with pickup using software. Such an operator who does not know the Morsea code will not react to such small things as “KN”!
If he doesn’t know walrus, he knows slang and Q code?
Is SOTA a place to learn operator? This should be done during regular QSOs!
Beginners should come here only after they get a lot of practice.
Here it begins to be like the WWFF activations I call it the ZOO!
Yesterday, during my GMA activation, the SOTA / WWFF activator gave
dozens of times / p / p / p? but the WWFF hunters did not react at all; I did not pass s2s!
Besides, as an orthodox QRP, I am probably most often stepped into the soil by such operators.
Regards Mariusz SP9AMH / QRP
Hi Mariusz,
Even though you run QRP using a small antenna in your attic, your callsign is well known to many SOTA activators. Your signal is usually 339 with me but I’m sure the ears of many activators (including mine) prick up when they hear faintly “S P 9” and ignore the ‘big guns’.
73 Andy