What use is an F-call?

Recently there was a contest that looked interesting. I participate in contests as a way to speak to many stations, to add countries to my DX list and to learn about how other people run their station. It's a great opportunity to have access to a large number of stations in a short period of time.

As part of my preparation for this particular contest, I spent some time reading the rules, so that when I got on air, I'd know what to expect as the exchange, what the other station would say and what they expected in return, to learn what the point scoring system was and what I could expect during the contest.

The points were allocated in such a way that contacts were only scored between me and the country that originated the contest, in this case, if I made a contact with a station in Canada or the United States, there'd be a point to be made, but if I made a contact with Venezuela, or with Kenya, or the United Arab Emirates, there'd be no points.

Just so I'm not mistaken, this is not about me making points, its about the desirability of people making contact with me. If there is no incentive for a station outside Canada or the USA to make contact with me, because there's no points to be had, there would be no chance of me talking to anyone other than Canada and the United States.

So far, I've made two contacts with the USA, one several years ago, 10 Watts - Squid Pole at the ocean to Portland Oregon. One more recently with Austin Texas, with 5 Watts on a tri-element beam. Both those contacts were completely out of the blue, the latter hard work - especially on the part of the other station.

The short of it is that as a result, I didn't actually turn on my radio to try to make contacts.

To bring home the error of my ways, I was presented with a video made by Peter, VK3YE who used a delta-loop and his 817 to make many contacts with the USA. Of course, he's in VK3 and I'm in VK6, he was on the ocean and I'm at a lake, but even those differences wouldn't have prevented me from making contacts.

Inexperienced as I am, I chose not to operate. What a mistake, propagation was great, activity level was high, contacts were there for the taking.

Lesson learnt, if you don't try, you're guaranteed to fail.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB