What use is an F-call?

Last week I was reading a report from another Amateur, a QRP station who has made it his aim to have a DX contact every day. John N8ZYA, living in Charleston West Virginia, wrote on his blog that he'd made a contact with Japan.

Initially that made me laugh, since for him, that contact was noteworthy, for me, it's one of six Japanese contacts I've made while QRP, in fact my very first QSO on HF was with Japan, sadly the information about what station that was is not recorded by me.

After I stopped laughing I had a look at what the implications were. For John, getting to the rest of the US is perhaps not trivial, but at least about as hard as it is to get across Australia for me. I then realised that for John, Japan was on the other side of the planet, for me it was next door.

I joked with John that one day I'd be reporting that I'd worked all states - in the USA, and that he had probably already achieved that, to which he responded that he still had to work Alaska.

So my learning for the week was to grok for the first time that my contact with Japan is not the same as your contact with Japan. Every station and location is different, all the time.

So when you next hear someone share their latest contact, perhaps it's a great opportunity to reflect on how hard that might be for you to achieve.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB