I have come to the conclusion that chasing DX late at night on 40m and 30m CW is the best way to do it. I have a few reasons for this:
1. Not many people are up real late, only the hard-core operators. When everyone is up during the day time, and I will use after 5:00pm (whatever time zone) as an example, everyone is back from work and typically is sitting down to relax after their day. So the population of operators is significantly higher.
In the middle of the night the lower bands spark surprising activity to both the east and west. On the east you have Europe. All of the Europeans are just getting up, it is their morning. In the west you have Australia, New Zealand, the rest of the Pacific, Japan, etc. All of them are at the close of their day. By sitting right in the middle of the dark half of the day you can hit both sides. Granted, grey-line enhancement will help also.
2. The higher bands are open during daylight hours. The higher bands also have lower skip angles, generally, than do lower frequency signals. This enhances the ability to go far. The higher bands require smaller antennas and the antennas can be closer to the ground and still get decent performance. Add in the fact that "normal" people are up during daylight hours and you have yourself a jam-packed band. Stick a DX station in the mix and it is like tossing a steak in to the middle of a pack of wolves.
By higher bands I mean 20m mostly. 17m seems to do alright also, but anything higher is not F-layer skip. Usually the E-layer starts affecting anything higher. Take 10m for example. All of the openings there are almost entirely Es right now - the same as 6m.
3. There are more people that operate voice modes and digital modes than there are old-fashioned brass pounders (Morse code, or CW, operators). Most of the time I can venture to the CW sub-bands and scroll around and the activity is quite sparse. Take 20m for example - it is the hot band right now during the daytime (and on to about 10:00pm here). Everyone is on that band - on voice. Go down to below 14.070 and see how much activity there is in comparison.
I would say we need more CW operators, and to a certain extent that is very true (I am pro-code on the exams, but I know that won't come back), but to be quite honest - after surfing the sideband portions of 40 and 20m I kinda like the non-clogged CW portions.
What I see is this: you stick DX on 20m during the daytime and it is a feeding-frenzy. Everyone and their brother wants a piece. You get operators running split and have pile-ups with no bottom. Even on CW with 20m. If there is a foreign country on the air everyone wants it.
Down on the bottom of 40m (below 7.025, that's where 99% of the DX shows up) at night I hear foreign stations calling CQ DX - with NO replies! Tonight I heard I1YRL (Italy) calling CQ USA with NO replies. Can you imagine that?? CQ USA - "calling any American station". We have the highest population of Amateur radio operators and here is Italy calling the USA with no replies? So I casually jumped on there and worked him with no contest.
In the past I have heard several other countries on the air calling CQ DX (which we, Americans, would be DX to them) with very few replies. Working them is, even with my poor antennas, a cake-walk! I worked two ZL's back-to-back one night - both calling CQ DX. Again, it was quite astonishing to sit there and hear them work a couple people and then have to call CQ for five or six rounds before anyone else came back - and this is New Zealand!
Maybe I am missing something here - but in my experience, having been a Ham since March of 2001 and on HF since 2002 (though, I know that doesn't stack up to some of the Old Timers who have been a ham for 50+ years), it sure takes a lot of work to rack up many countries in your log. If you aren't at the right place at the right time you won't work them. I always got so excited when I would hear Europeans on and then would be frustrated as could be that I couldn't get through the pile-ups. For me to get on the air now and scroll across a 25kHz wide segment of one band and work so many places so easily is an odd feeling - but it is really exciting!
If you want to work DX - stay out of the feeding frenzy on 20m! Get your Extra, learn code, jump down to the bottom of 40m, maybe play around on 30m some, and have fun running with DX every night! Then again, maybe I shouldn't be posting my secrets...
Keep in mind, I still can't roll at 20wpm conversing with other operators yet. I can get by at 15 max (if I am in the swing of it). However, I can catch call signs, signal reports, and occasionally names and QTH's at 25wpm. That's all you need to log a QSO, right? Call and report?
