First Pile-up! July 16, 2011

I have heard about pile-ups, but had not run across any until Saturday morning, July 16; around 1430 or 1500 Universal time (7:30 or 8am here on the West coast USA).

I was dialing slowly through the 20 meter band and came across a pretty clear voice with an unfamiliar accent. This was on frequency 14.197.7MHz. His call ended quickly and right away two other guys tried to call him. He replied to one of them. Again their call was very brief, giving signal reports mostly. This time there were four or five guys trying to call him. Until now, I have rarely heard more than two or three people trying to call someone at the same time and if that has happened, it was on the annual Field Day in June.

I heard the highly-in-demand voice say he was in KOREA!

That is 5000 miles away and is the furthest ham operator that's ever come through my speaker. I was unable to get his call sign nor what power or ntenna he was using. After his next call, there were more voices than I could count, all at different volume levels and all trying to reach the Korean contact.

This is what hams call a pile-up.

I had not heard one before. It was exciting to have been one of the earlier people to hear this Korean ham; before the pile-up really got going. It was exciting to hear someone so far away. Up until now, I had picked up Hawaii twice and Japan once and Australia once, though those last two were two years ago when I first got a ham radio and got my radio license.

K1QS from Maine calls and connects with Korea

One of the guys I heard very clearly calling the Korean ham, were K1QS from Maine; 2500 miles East of here! (He was the greatest distance continental ham I have heard up until now. He did manage to connect with Korea; and those two are about 7500 miles apart! I had to wonder whether there was some factor favoring East/West propagation that day. There is something called "ducting" that comes to mind but I have not studied about that.

I also clearly heard AC0O (alpha charley zero oscar) New Mexico at 1100 miles from me. W6KM in San Jose California came in loud and clear; that is a distance of 475 miles. Finally, KY7W from Tempe Arizona, a distance of 950 miles.

Obviously radio propagation conditions were the best I have encountered so far.

There have been about 3 days in May June and July so far which were pretty good for longer distance radio signals. Two years ago in Spring 2009, when I first started, I had one good day in about three months.

I will admit that I thought about trying to contact Mr Korea. (I have yet to transmit with my radio!). I did not try it though because I have not finished working on the better quality microphone and amplifier project that I started working on a while ago. At the moment all I have working is the stock hand microphone that comes with the ICOM 730 radio. I am kind of fussy about things like audio quality so I am holding back on making my first transmission/contact until I have the better microphone/audio system working.

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