I feel this subject should be covered again since we have some newcomers in the crowd. Why split frequency you might ask and that is a good question. As dx hunters it has long been a practice for the dx station to transmit on one frequency and listen on the other, it prevents one big problem. If the pile up grows to great proportions then it becomes almost impossible to hear the dx station. By splitting the dx remains in the clear and the callers are spread out a little giving others a chance to work the rare one.
So how is split done, is it complex and will I mess up my rig in so doing it. The answer to this is in the following list of basic instructions. No, you will not mess up your radio, dismiss that now. Is it complex? No, it is rather simple, if you can read, know what the controls do on your rig, you can be in business.
Ok, say we have A5A making an appearance and the op states listening up 5, what do you do? One you do not continue to call on his frequency, this makes enemies, you may be called a lid.
The simplest method is to look for that control marked XIT, most rigs have them these days, push the control, on some rigs an Icon appears letting you know this is now functional. On other rigs it should indicate that the main vfo is in XIT mode. Now, rotate that control to indicate five khz, key the rig, the main vfo should indicate 5 khz up and once you unkey the main vfo returns to the frequency where the dx is located. Pretty simple so far. Of course once you worked the station, depress the XIT again to return to normal.
Method Two:
If your rig has RIT you can do split in reverse, set the main dial up five Khz, initiate RIT and tune down to the DX frequency. Pretty simple.
Method Three:
Most rigs have two vfos these days, so to split you need to get them both together, or at least close to one another and preset what you want. Look for the button that says M=S that is main equals Sub. Depress it, this places both VFO's on the same frequency, at this time you should see the frequency of the second VFO somewhere on your op screen. Grasp the tuning knob for the second VFO and tune it to 5khz up from the dx stations frequency, depress the split button. Key the rig, you should see the changes on your frequency readout, key down, you are up five, key up, back to the listening channel.
In your set up up make sure that both VFO's are in the mode you want, USB, LSB, CW etc. If on the off chance you notice the frequency pairs are reversed, simply depress the M/S button. Once set up, then you are ready to start calling the DX. Be sure of course to depress split when you are finished, this returns the rig to normal operation. Nothing complex about it.
However, do not wait until you hear something to try and set up the rig, do some tests on your own, only thing you have to do is key the rig, no speaking, see what happens and get this in your mind as to the functions of the controls mentioned.
Granted, this is a quick version, you may want to consult your manual just in case and go from that point.
It works the same way for CW, so once you mastered how it works, no problem for any mode.
