What use is an F-call?

It's good to get inspiration and it arrives in the strangest ways at the most unexpected time. I've been pretty busy in my non-amateur radio activities over the past months. Not that you'd notice, a bit like a duck floating on a lake, the picture of serenity itself, furiously paddling under water.

I have a regular activity, the VK6 F-troop which I host on behalf of Foundation Licensees across VK6 every Saturday at 8am local time. It forces me to turn my radio on and gives me an opportunity to talk to other amateurs on at the very least a weekly basis.

One of the amateurs, Ronald VK6FRSK continues to throw new ideas and experiments into the air and every now and then one of them speaks to me at an unexpected level. Ronald reported listening and attempting to talk to overflying satellites and the International Space Station with a rubber-ducky antenna which gave me an unexpected thrill. I tuned to an ISS frequency and almost without effort managed to hear it overhead.

I didn't have more time spare to do anything else, but just the thrill of hearing that gave me inspiration and it was just a little thing!

So, if you've done something, heard something, learnt something, tell another amateur about it, not to brag, though that's always fun, just to inspire the next experiment when it seems hard to see the wood for the trees.

So, whom have you inspired lately?

I'm Onno - VK6FLAB