What use is an F-call? Recently I talked about making contacts on HF. Picking the band, the time of day, the right location on the band and looking for a nice loud station are part of the equation, but there are other considerations to be had. If you consider a station transmitting with 1.5 kilowatt on a 5 element Yagi and you're at home with your radio, you tune around and you find this station to be the loudest on the band, you're likely to try to talk to them. Sometimes this even works. However, many times, in fact, most of the time, this is pretty hard to do for a number of reasons. The first reason that this is hard is because their strength is a combination of lots of power and lots of antenna gain. If you transmit back, the only thing going for you is their antenna gain, but their power will likely distort your perception of how well they'll hear you. If you find a station that tells someone else that they're running high power, then make sure that their signal to you is banging the S-meter against the wall, that is 10 or 20 db over 9, before you spend hours trying to get their attention. I should point out that there are plenty of amazing operators who will pick out your tiny signal among the hash and call you back but there are many more who to put it kindly are deaf as a post, who expect HF to sound like a 2m FM repeater and set up their kit to make it so. You're unlikely to ever succeed in making contact with the latter, but you'll be thrilled when you deal with the former. Another aspect making it hard to talk to such a loud station is that everyone else also hears it very loud and will also call in. This will completely drown your signal at their end, so you're unlikely to cut through. There are some amateurs who swear by changing their microphone response to "cut through", or to fiddle with other aspects of their transmission, but I've got to say that this lacks finesse and that's what really is required. Imagine that you're at the other end. Your aim is to make as many contacts as possible with weird and wonderful stations. Living in Australia makes your callsign pretty sought after, so use that to your advantage. When you're on a roll, you don't want to break the rhythm, so, listen for a few overs to see what is going on. Does the station always end their QSO in the same way, or is it different each time? Write down the information that you pick up from the station, where they are, who the operator is, lots of little details will make the contact go smoothly. Make sure that you have their callsign correct, check it again before you call. Also, write down the frequency on which the station is operating. If they spend a little while talking to each station, you can go hunting for another station and come back to check their progress. When you do call, try to speak in the rhythm of the other station. If they're fast, speak fast. If they're slow, speak slow. Figure out when they're likely to key their mike and when they'll release it. Find breaks in the pauses and use those to put your callsign out. Only call once per over, many stations will ignore you if you don't. Make sure that you just say your callsign, not theirs, not while you're getting their attention. There is more on this topic to share, but listen to the other station and get a feel for the person at the other end. I'm Onno VK6FLAB