What use is an F-call?

Making contacts on HF is a challenge. Over the past few weeks I've talked about some of the things you can do to make your HF life simpler. At no time have I advocated sitting on a frequency calling CQ.

You could do that if you liked, but there are times and places to be more successful in that endeavour also.

If you feel the need to call CQ, then pick a frequency that'll be visited by others. Make sure you're not at the end of the band where no-one goes, rather pick a spot next to another big fish. Leave a gap and set up shop next door. Think of it as fishing with bait.

The big station is the bait, you're the little minnow on the side, easy to pick off if you're heard, ignored if not. The nice thing about being next to a big station is that people are slowing down to hear it and in doing so might also hear you, which of course is the aim of the game.

If I look back at the contacts I've made so far, calling CQ is the least effective way of making a contact. It's not a waste of time, but there are better ways. Searching and Pouncing, that is finding and getting a station, one at a time, is much more effective. Use the tools at your disposal. Rotate your antenna if you have a rotator, tune slowly, and look around. Stations are often in a QSO with another station, so you might not hear both sides of the discussion. You might tune past when the station you cannot hear is talking, so you'll never know that there is a big loud station on the same frequency.

Sometimes you hear a loud station, but it's a station responding to a CQ request. If that's the case, set up shop next door and call them as soon as their QSO is finished, you'll pick up weird and wonderful stations along the way.

If you hear a station that is just too far away, have a go anyway. You don't know what their conditions are like, for all you know they have a very quiet QTH and can hear the proverbial mosquito fart.

There are many failures in HF communications, making the successes all the sweeter.

Have a crack!

I'm Onno VK6FLAB