What use is an F-call?

Recently I witnessed something quite amazing. I was at an Amateur Radio club relaxing and chatting with other amateurs. We were scattered throughout the clubhouse, several little groups of interest scattered around. People moving between groups as their interest changed and a whole dynamic ecology of knowledge was being distributed. There were radios set-up all over the place, an Oscilloscope was plugged into a kit to check its operation while the local club shop was open for business with connectors and adapters. It was a real hive of activity, BBQ going in the background and all.

While all this was happening, a few amateurs gathered around a set and stopped talking. The radio was tuned to a station that was directing a pile-up. If you're unfamiliar, a pile-up is what happens when one station calls CQ and several stations respond. Then others hear the commotion and they join in, then more hear it and before you know it, there are 20 or 30 stations all on the same frequency, scattered all over the globe chiming in and exchanging signal reports.

Now I've heard a few pile-ups like that. I had the joy of being the source of one of them during the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend when the station I was operating seemed to be getting calls from all over the place for a solid 80 minutes or so.

Back to the pile-up I was describing earlier, the one at the clubhouse.

The thing that set this pile-up apart for me was that it was all done in Morse or in the vernacular, CW. It was the first time I'd heard Morse clustered like that. Until then I've heard the local repeater beep out its call, I've contributed my own in the form of pre-recorded audio at the top of What use is an F-call?, but this was quite something. You could hear differences in tonality, speed, how someone tapped their key, their difference in signal strength. Each signal had their own personal characteristic, unlike a voice pile-up where you can make out the odd call-sign, this seemed to be a whole lot more crisp affair.

I'd already decided that I was going to spend some effort learning Morse, but this just made my day.

If you get the chance to hear a CW pile-up, have a listen. You might not yet speak the lingo, but you'll hear more than you thought you would.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB