What use is an F-call?

Recently I had a discussion with a Foundation Licensed amateur who told me that he'd had some limited success making contacts using 10 Watts, but that he longed to have more power to get out and make better contacts.

While I understand the sentiment, I know from personal experience that it just isn't true. You don't need oodles of power to smack the audio against the receiver at the other end.

What you need is propagation and you need a set-up that works.

Now I'd be the first to admit that propagation is a bit of a mystery to me at the best of times, but my solution to that is to sit tight, listen and when lots of stations turn up at my door-step as it were - that is, I can hear lots of people calling - I've got a great chance at getting through.

What was a little more baffling to me was that this amateur, as I said, an F-Call had not really found a way to discuss his issues with any other amateurs. He'd been pretty isolated and only in discussing the issue with other F-Calls did he start investigating further.

I'd like to encourage you to ask around. Look who else is on air near you and talk to them about what you're seeing. The more people you talk to, the more you learn and the more you have a chance of getting to the magic point where you can get those elusive contacts on HF using your F-Call.

As I've said in the past, and I'll continue to say, power is not the answer, what you do with what you have is what makes the difference. Low power operation does not need to be a frustrating exercise in futility, QRP stations are doing this all the time.

Mostly it's a matter of attitude. Don't be shy. The amateurs around you who have their standard or advanced license needed to learn their craft too.

I'm Onno, VK6FLAB