working split (for the hams here)

I recently learned about working split for pileups.  J38r was working split (duplex) from a dxpedition on an island near Granada. He was transmitting on 28.440 and listening between 5 and 15 kilohertz up. I managed to sort of get him but he couldn't copy well enough to count as a contact. After an hour I gave up and called my neighbor and walked him through setting his radio for working split. My neighbor was able to set his radio up for this but had no luck making the contact either.
He had never done this before and if nothing else, it felt good to teach him what I've learned.
So much for my knowledge of geography. Grenada is the island. For some reason I thought it was on the mainland.

I'm not looking forward to learning how to work split on a new rig, my understanding is that the ft1000mp I'm using now is one of the easiest to use for split. Just hit A=B , tune B however far you need to split and push the tx button above the sub dial. Easy peasy. I just got a FT450, haven't messed with it a lot so not sure how to set it up. Don't really have time at the moment or room for it on the desk. Gotta get off my butt and fix the Tek scope I bought months ago that is collecting dust on the open PC boards. Then I'll have some room.

On my ic7300, I tune vfo a to where I'm listening and vfo b to where I want to transmit. Then push the split button and make sure I'm on vfo a. Surprisingly easy.

Tonight I found j38r on 18.120 working up 5. I tried for almost an hour trying with no success until propagation died. I was surprised to see 17m working so late!
Since this is new to me I'm a bit obsessed with it. Looking forward to trying again tomorrow.

All Greek to me

After my Elmer got sick things fell apart and I lost interest in the entire ham radio scene

Would like to figure it out but doing it alone just frustrates me

All Greek to me

After my Elmer got sick things fell apart and I lost interest in the entire ham radio scene

Would like to figure it out but doing it alone just frustrates me

I can certainly understand that.
Lots of stations trying to contact a station at the same time is called a pileup. In this case, j38r was working from a sought after location.  To make it easier for everyone, he would transmit on one frequency and listen on another, usually 5 to 15 kilohertz away. He would transmit "j38r, up 5".  That would let you know where to transmit in order for you to be heard while keeping his transmit frequency more open. There are settings on modern transceivers that only go to your transmit frequency when you key the microphone, then switch back to the other frequency when you quit transmitting. Before my time you had two rigs, one only received and the other was a transmitter.

I’ve got the FT5D set up as a scanner now and don’t have any shortwave frequencies programmed right now

The only split you'll need with that radio is a repeater split, which it will do automatically.

Have you thought about checking this club out?

https://shywyarc.net/wp/

Have you thought about checking this club out?

https://shywyarc.net/wp/

If you do go further, don't get wrapped around the axle trying to learn everything at one time. As a technician (lowest level of license), you'd have hf privilege on 10 meters but mostly on vhf/uhf. There is so much to learn you can't expect to go from freshman to PhD in a crash course.

One other thing.. once you're licensed, you'd have access to the repeaters. While most, if not all don't require money to use them, there's a lot of money in equipment and maintenance as well as tower space payments.