What use is an F-call?

On previous occasions I've spoken about contesting and what it might add to your amateur experience. I know that there are amateurs who are convinced that contesting isn't for them, you'll never hear them on air, they don't think it's worth while, it's too complicated, it's not fun, it's not them.

I beg to differ.

In my opinion, contesting is among the most fun you can have with amateur radio and it's the most challenging, rewarding and fundamental test of your amateur abilities.

I know that you might be thinking that your station isn't up to the task, but I learnt at an early age that if you don't try, you're guaranteed to fail. Of course there are contests that are high profile, attract the bulk of the world wide amateur community and flood the band with their noise, but there are also smaller and even tiny contests where you can practice and get your feet wet. There is at least one contest every weekend of the year, that's 52 contests right there, but the reality is that there are many, many more contests than that.

In essence a contest is the process of sending unique information to another station, and receiving unique information from then, logging the exchange and moving on to the next station. What the exchange is differs for each contest, for some it's a number that keeps incrementing each time you make a contact, for others it's your state, or your years in amateur radio, or your location, or any number of other forms of exchange.

A contest is of course not just sending and receiving information, it's a test of your equipment, your radio, antenna, microphone, logging software and any number of other aspects of the hobby that will challenge you. You'll learn about propagation, you'll use your phonetic alphabet more than you thought possible and you'll learn that different countries have different preferences for their phonetics.

Some contests run for a short time, an hour, others run for two or more days.

In each contest, preparation is a big part of the experience, not just preparation of your gear, but also of yourself, your diet, sleep, fitness and the like. Depending on how seriously you take your contesting, you might find yourself in training before a big one and exchanging ideas and lessons with some of your friends. Perhaps you'll join together and run a contest station with multiple radios going at the same time, at which point you'll be learning about interference first hand.

Getting started on a contest is simple, go on-line, do a search for amateur radio contests, you'll find calendars, rules, logging software, educational material, videos, documents and much more.

Before you start a contest, read the rules and make sure you understand them, have a listen around the bands to get a feel for the tempo of the contest and dive in.

Some terms you're going to come across are HP, or High Power, SO2R or Single Operator - 2 radios. You'll come across a concept of a multiplier, which is a scoring mechanism that often doubles your score every time you get a multiplier. For example, you might get a multiplier for each zone you work, or for each country, or for a contact on a different band. Sometimes the scores differ depending on whom you talk to on which band, sometimes it's a different score for a different distance, or more points for talking to a QRP station, so it pays to understand the rules.

There are many tricks to learn, people to talk to and things to do, but the first step is to get over the mindset that contesting isn't your thing.

If you have questions about contesting, drop me a line via email: vk6flab@wia.org.au

I hope I've given you some food for thought.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB