SSB DX on 20 metres: 14195 kHz, expeditions and pile-ups by voice

What you hear

Tune to 14195 kHz in upper sideband and a voice comes out of the hiss, clear if the frequency is exact, like a cartoon duck if it is a few hundred hertz off. That is single sideband, the way voice has travelled on shortwave since the 1960s: the carrier and one sideband are removed before transmission, the receiver puts the carrier back, and the result takes a third of the bandwidth of AM with all the power in the speech. Above 10 MHz amateurs use the upper sideband, below it the lower one, a habit from the first transceivers that stuck.

Most days 14195 kHz is an ordinary spot in the voice segment of 20 m, which stretches from about 14100 to 14350 kHz: contacts with a name, a location and a report of five-nine, nets, contests on weekends. Then an expedition goes on the air from an island with no resident amateurs, and the place changes character. The expedition station calls, gives a report, says "thank you, up five", and a few kilohertz above it a hundred stations call at once, a roar of callsigns from every continent. On the expedition's own frequency you hear one calm voice working through them, a contact every ten or fifteen seconds; a few kilohertz up you hear the crowd it is picking from. That is a pile-up worked split, the most dramatic thing voice on shortwave produces.

Who transmits and why

Licensed amateurs, and among them the DX chasers, people collecting countries and territories, some 340 on the current list, each confirmed by a contact. The rare ones have no amateurs living there, so expeditions go: a team lands on an uninhabited island or a research station with generators, antennas and a schedule, makes tens of thousands of contacts in two weeks, and leaves. Everyone who wants that entity in the log must get through in that window, hence the pile-ups.

14195 kHz is marked in the band plan as the priority frequency for expeditions on 20 m, give or take five kilohertz, and expeditions announce their frequencies in advance, so this is where to look first. The spot also attracts hangers-on: people who transmit on the expedition's frequency by mistake, the self-appointed police who shout at them, and, when there is no expedition, the regular users of a good quiet frequency.

When and where to listen

20 m is open most of the day and, in summer, much of the night. From Europe, expeditions in the Pacific and East Asia come through in the morning, the Caribbean and South America in the afternoon and evening, the Indian Ocean and Africa during the day. An expedition works the regions in turn, so listen to which continent it is calling: "Europe only" is normal. A receiver in the region being called hears the calm side best; one in the calling region hears the roar. The dial is 14195 kHz in USB; when nothing is happening there, step through 14150 to 14300 kHz and the band's ordinary voices appear every few kilohertz.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Amateur radio → SSB DX 20 m. The program picks a public receiver that covers 14195 kHz, tunes it and sets USB with the standard voice passband; a click on a signal in the waterfall snaps the tuning onto it, which takes the duck out of the voice. The logbook follows a DX cluster, which shows where expeditions are being spotted right now and is the quickest way to find a pile-up. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed; the program only listens.