What use is an F-call?

This week I learnt an interesting lesson. The difference between a propagation forecast and reality. I've been trying to work out what the best time and band would be for me to make some DX contacts using 5 Watts and spent most of the week learning about VOACAP, the Voice Of America Coverage Analysis Program, reading up on HAP charts, or Hourly Area Prediction charts, figuring out if I can install some of this software on my Ubuntu workstation and what is needed to make it all work.

I'm still in the middle of that process, but finally decided I had enough knowledge and information to use a tool, and see what I could achieve in the way of a DX contact to Europe on 15m and what the best time might be to achieve that.

So, the data I had told me that if I started around 4am UTC, I could likely begin to hear Europe and have some success until around 10am UTC.

With that in my mind I gamely set out to do exactly that. I was busy at 4am, so I postponed to around 6am UTC and tried my luck. Nothing, not a sausage. There was a JQ1 station, so I had a QSO with him, got a 5 and 5 report for my efforts, excellent, but not precisely what I had in mind.

The next day I was told that an hour after I stopped, all was booming in.

So, my lesson for the day, reality and theory are complementary, rarely are they the same.

I'm Onno