I don't understand split operation. So, I tried googling for articles, and
found one at http://www.guam.net/pub/midxa/nl/nl_apr98.html

Here is an excerpt which emphasizes my confusion:

"When do you need to go to a split operation ? When the people you are
giving reports to are not answering, or when you are not getting your
report from the station you are working because of other stations who
are continuously calling. Simply, when the QRM starts slowing you
down. Split operation moves the QRM and you are no longer forced to
wait for 20 or 30 stations to stop calling you so you can work one of
them Modern transceivers today come equipped with two VFO's - some
even come with two receivers. The RIT (on Yaesu rigs, the CLARIFIER)
can also be used for split operations. The primary goal of a split
operation is to get the calling stations (the pileup) far enough away
from the DX station so that the pileup causes no interference on
frequency the DX station is transmitting on."

So, this seems to say that if you are getting so much QRM that you
can't hear the calling stations, you move them to a different
frequency.

OK, so you move them to a different frequency. How does that help
anything if they are at 14.12 instead of 14.10? They are still all
calling in the same place.

I guess I do see that you might be better heard, if you have a transmit
frequency and a listen frequency, no one is talking over your transmit
frequency so stations can hear you without QRM. But if you have a
listen frequency, that's where everyone will be and the DX station will
always have to deal with QRM.

Am I missing something?

73,

--
Dave * N3WTK (DM04xf) * http://isi.mtwilson.edu * n3wtk at arrl dot net