It was a shame we couldn’t make it yesterday. Your signal suffered deep QSB and the frequency also had some QRM from time to time. I hope things will be better next time and I’m sure we’ll make it soon.
73,
Guru
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I’m going to revive this 2 years old thread because it’s the time for it.
I wrote in November 2019 that North-American activators willing to be chased by European chasers should try to be active on 20m before our sunset arrives and the band gets closed. It’s now begining of December and after having lost some NA activations in the last few days due to conditions rapidly deteriorating after sunset, I want to make all NA activators aware that our sunset will be at 16h34 utc today and after that time there’s a short time left for us to hear and be able to chase a QRP SOTA activator in North-America.
In case you fancy some DX QSOs in your log, please, remember activating on 20m first.
Thank you.
73,
Guru
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The most significant tip for me would be for chasers to only send their callsign ONCE. I’ll answer the first and loudest one I hear and EVERYONE I hear as the pileup continues. But if I hear a loud call first and wish to answer them, I’m QRM’d by others who are sending their calls over and over all of which wastes time. Its especially a problem on 20 which is why I usually make it the last band I operate on. Names withheld to protect the guilty. 
Dean ~ K2JB
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My own experience tells me that sending my callsign only once will put me down, down, down far down in the pileup because there are pretty much always others putting a stronger signal than mine. Some not very experienced NA operators need me to repeat 4 or 5 times my callsign to finally understand that I’m not a US station and my preffix is not AE, nor NA, or KA or WA, etc.
Sending my short callsign twice is key for me to succeeding in the pile most of the times.
Only when there’s a good CW operator and there are not other chasers in the pile up, I send my callsign just once and I’m picked up immediately. Otherwise, it’s 99,99% sure that I won’t be picked up.
When you don’t chase with 1.5KW and huge antennas, you need to develop your own strategies to overcome those big guns. Very few times I’m the first chaser an activator works, sometimes I’ve also been the last chaser an activator has worked, but being always at the end of the pileup is far too bad.
73,
Guru
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Several activators here in Europe (me included) use a special strategy to overcome this problem. You pickup for instance AC1Z and you start coming back to him while there are still other chasers calling. They will have probably QRMd you and AC1Z didn’t hear you saying his callsign at the beginning of your transmission, so he doesn’t know you are coming back to him. The special strategy consists in sending the chaser’s callsign ALSO at the end of your transmission, when all the other tail-enders had already got quiet.
So, assuming you picked up AC1Z, you would send:
AC1Z GM TNX UR 599 599 AC1Z BK
The tail-enders may have QRMd the first half of your transmission, but the second half (signal report and chaser callsign at the end) will have been perfectly copied by everyone.
I highly recommend you all to do it this way when the pile up is big and you have picked up a chaser callsign well before the pileup had remained quiet.
73,
Guru
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