What use is an F-call?

I've heard it expressed that working on HF using an F-call is hard graft. No-one hears you, they don't talk to you, they ignore you, nothing works, it's all too hard. I've heard F-calls tell me that they've called CQ for hours and no-one wants to play.

I understand that HF is challenging, but it's not impossible. There are a number of things going on that make that a HF contact requires more effort than talking on a 2m repeater.

Making contacts on HF requires that you understand what's going on, that some of the things that you're thinking are likely not true and some of your expectations are wrong. I'm not the oracle of amateur radio, that would be a sorry state of affairs, but I can share some of the things I've learnt.

Finding someone to talk to on-air is the simplest way to make a contact. That is, you scan up and down the bands, nice and slowly, to find a station that's nice and loud. If they're not moving your S-meter, it's unlikely that you're going to move theirs, or even make yourself heard above the noise at their end. So, at least initially, look for a station with a 5/8 readability. If you're not ever getting any of those then I'd spend some time having a look at the antenna you're using.

The more you listen on bands, the more you'll get a feel for when things happen on a particular band, and where. The 10m band runs from 28MHz all the way past 29 MHz, but you're not often going to find lots of activity at 28.7, so have a look at a DX Cluster Online and see where people "hang-out", spend more time there than in the fringes of a band. That's not to say that no-one is ever on 28.7, just that you'll find more people more often between 28.4 and 28.5.

Also, if you cannot hear any noise on a band it could be that the band is closed, or it could be that it's wide open and no-one is playing because they're all scanning up and down the band waiting for someone to call. So, sometimes its worth your while to call CQ a couple of times to see what, if any response, you might get.

There are other aspects to making a contact on HF and I'll talk about those at another time, but don't give up.

I've lost count of the number of times I've packed my radio into my car, set-up at some location, got my logging gear out and then spent three hours getting nothing. Similarly, I've lost count of the times that I turned on my radio by chance, scanned up and down the dial, found a station, called back and made a contact.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB