N0APX Ham Radio Adventures

So you’re listening to that rare DX station working a pileup. He finishes a contact and says “QRZ up?” What does “up” mean? You’re not sure, but you want to make the contact, so you call, “Kilo Foxtrot Zero Mike Charlie X-ray!” Suddenly you hear two or three other stations shouting at you “5 UP!” and, “HE’S LISTENING UP!” Slightly taken aback, you pause and listen. You hear the DX station call again “QRZ up?” You give your call again, and again more stations shouting at you, “MIKE CHARLIE X-RAY, he’s listening UP!” This is where I found myself for the Clipperton Island DXpedition in early 2024.

So what does listening up mean anyway? First of all, let’s look at this from the perspective of the DX station. Imagine you’re out there on a DXpedition to a rare island and you call “CQ!” Most everyone who is paying attention and can hear your signal will immediately want to respond. You pick a call out of the pileup and answer it, but when you unkey, you realize that the pileup kept going over the top of your signal, and no one actually heard your response. You wish you had some way of separating your signal from the pileup so that everyone could hear you, even if the pileup is still calling. That’s where working split comes in. The DX station will call on one frequency, for example, 14.285 while listening to another frequency 5 kHz above the first, in this case, 14.290 or “5 up.” “5 to 10 up” or “5 to 15 up” is basically the same thing, only the DX station is tuning through and listening to a range of frequencies instead of just one frequency.

So how do you work split and make your contact with that rare DX? Well, most rigs these days make it simple. A lot of them have a built-in split mode function so that you can set your two frequencies and listen on his calling frequency while calling “up 5.”

So how come the other operators just hollered “UP 5” with no context? Well, let’s look at it from their perspective for a moment. While I think a brief explanation of split mode would be ideal, it’s not always doable in that setting. They are trying to hear the DX station, and suddenly it is drowned out by a station calling on the same frequency. They don’t want to disrupt the DX station’s pileup, so they try to provide the information in as short amount of time as possible. They’re simply trying to keep the DX station clear so that they and everyone else can hear him. That said, surely there’s a better way than “UP 5!”

So did I ever get Clipperton? No I never did. I was only working with 10 watts on an HTX10 at that time. But since I learned what working split mode is, I have managed to get 3G0YA in the log!

73,

Andy KF0MCX