What use is an F-call?

I've participated in several contests since I became an Amateur. When I talk about contesting, I often hear the same response, "Contesting is not for me". In talking to some of those people, it's clear to me that often Contesting as an activity is not really understood.

I'm not going to talk to you about how much fun it is, and it is, or how much you learn, because you do, or winning, because you can, I'm going to talk about the mechanics of contesting.

At it's heart, contesting is nothing more and nothing less than making a contact between two stations and exchanging some information and getting points for the effort.

How that precisely works depends entirely on the contest itself.

On a typical contest, the exchange is the readability and signal strength, which in most contests is 59, followed by a serial number. So, the information exchanged might be 59001 for your first contact, 59002 for the second and so-on. The other station will supply their information as it relates to them, if they've been working hard, their number to you might be 59402 and the next number they'll use will be 59403 and so on.

The process is known as giving out a number.

Sometimes the information is the number of years you've been an Amateur, sometimes it's the ITU or CQ zone you're in, it depends on the contest.

There are two basic ways you can participate, either by calling CQ, or by Searching and Pouncing, and some do both, sometimes even at the same time.

In the CQ participation, you find a clear frequency and call CQ, something like this: CQ Contest, VK6FLAB Victor Kilo Six Foxtrot Lima Alpha Bravo, Contest. Rinse and repeat. If you're lucky, someone will come back to your call with their callsign, at which point you can send your numbers, they'll send theirs and you start from the top.

If you're Searching and Pouncing, you'll tune up and down the dial, looking for stations calling CQ. Wait until you hear the pause in their call, and throw your callsign into the gap, once. If they call your callsign, give out your number and you're done. The recommendation is to start at the top and scan down, then go back to the top and scan down again. That way you'll cover the whole band in a systematic fashion.

Some other things to know.

You should take note of the numbers sent and received as well as the station worked, this is called logging and is a whole new topic all by itself. The contacts you made during a contest will count towards points if you decide to submit your log. These contacts will also count towards your DXCC if you should choose to keep track of how many countries you've worked.

I've stayed with the basics here to give you a taste of what it looks like.

Have a go at a contest, they're on most, if not all weekends, often more than one at the same time, all over the world.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB