Hi Chris and welcome to telegraphy! Keep it up, you’ll like it.
The more you work at it, you will learn more new abbreviations
and different ways to make QSOs. It’s changed a lot since I started
out 65 years ago! Hope to work you when you’re doing an activation!
73,
John, K6YK
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Chris,
On the summit YOU are the rare DX stn! Everyone wants YOU! YOU are the master.
Be confident, send your feel-good speed, do not hurry, relax and take your time. send “?” as long as you need to understand everything. Most chasers will appreciate.
Rehearse transmitting your ref in advance. ref? “ref DM/xx123”
Usually the “-” is not transmitted
Mistakes will happen - don’t be discouraged - if some chasers get the impression that you’re a lid - well there are many others left.
It’s like a contest somehow, practice with morserunner. This will help you to handle a pile-up.
Example: In a pile-up just focus on one signal. If you copied a significant part of the call,
repeat it. e.g you got xxxFU just answer “FU”. If you are lucky, only DL1FU will answer. If you are still not sure about the call: → “?”
And so forth
Welcome to the cw universe, gl
73 Martin
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Hi Chris,
in a pileup, if you hear just a wall of noise.
Relax, start using the RIT… and all will be good 
73s
Ingo
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Thanks for the good tips and moral support. So far I’ve only spotted at 80m because rarely anyone comes back there and a pileup is unlikely.
But Fred, DL1FU answered me many times and was very patient in the beginning. It is fitting that you mention him as an example. Greetings to you both.
One more thought. As already mentioned, you should never put yourself under pressure and forgive yourself for every mistake. That’s why I set the bar as low as possible to avoid failures that take the fun out of CW.
A spot at 40m and then bubbling sound on the rx, I’ll save that for later.
73 Chris
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Hi Chris,
It takes a lot of skill really, to sort out a callsign from a pileup of signals that sound like they are on exactly the same frequency. Learning to focus on one frequency is important, and you’ll note that if your preferred frequency for the received signal is 800 hz, then two signals very close together (less than 10 hz) are very difficult to separate. If you use your RIT to lower the pitch, then 10 hz is relatively further apart in signals on 400 and 410 and it is much easier to focus on one of them. This can be practiced when just listening to other pileups - you don’t need to put yourself under pressure of doing this when on a summit.
Another technique is to ask for only some of the callers at a time. This is something I used when I had a good dx callsign V85DA about 30 years ago. You ask for those with a specific number in their callsign. QRZ 6? Should cut the pileup to 10% of what it was. Then after working the few 6s, you choose a different number. Best to do it randomly so the 1s and 2s don’t give up in disgust hearing you go to 7, then 8 etc. But do it in any order you like.
Of course there are still those with other numbers who think you are mistaken and what you need is to hear their callsigns sent very loud, fast and often. Sad cases!
Good luck
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA
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That made me laugh Martin. Fred usually calls slightly off frequency and so gets through the monotone barrage of stations that have netted precisely… just enough to still be comfortably within the passband of my 250Hz filter. I’m sure the technique has saved him many hours of calling. 
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