What use is an F-call?

Recently I was part of a discussion about emergency preparedness. The idea being that as radio amateurs we're ideally suited to being communication hubs and conduits to pass messages along. Of course as part of that we need to have skills and equipment to make those things possible.

I've often said that doing contests are a great way to improve your radio skills. It's an adverse environment in which sending and receiving messages is related to your score and as a bonus, it's a great way to pick up some DX stations that are not yet in your log.

There are other things that you can do as an amateur to improve your level of preparedness. I recently conducted an informal survey among a group of amateurs to see which repeaters they had programmed into their radios and which ones they'd actually used.

Turns out, in our little group, two repeaters were being used, the rest, around 15 were sometimes programmed into radios, but hardly ever used.

As part of improving our skills we want to make sure that we actually know which repeaters we can use, have the ability to actually use them and while we're at it, take the opportunity to pass along some message traffic, just for the fun of trying and the fun of practicing.

This is really part of a much larger conversation. For example, you might have a radio and batteries, but do your batteries work with the radio of your mate? Do you have conversion cables to deal with this, are their polarities the same, is there a standard that you might follow?

If you're getting into SOTA, Summits On The Air, that is, climbing up mountains and setting up a radio and making contacts, you're well and truly on your way to being prepared for an emergency, with a pack, food, shelter, power and a portable radio. If you have all that and you don't have the skills to pass on messages, then what do you need to do to get those skills?

There are formal processes, some of them encompassed by associations like WICEN, the Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network, the local SES and other first responders.

What is your level of preparedness, not only your radio, but your skills?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB