What Use Is An F-call?

What use is an F-call? Recently I was sitting on a plane talking to a person whom I had just met. We were discussing our interests and experience and the subject of Amateur Radio came up. There was the obligatory CB radio comment and some discussion about marine radio, but the discussion boiled down to this: "What's the point?" I eased into the subject by observing that as a hobby I found it to be technically challenging without it having a direct relationship to my day-job in IT. We discussed the ideas that embody the hobby, non-commercial use, experimentation, discovery, camaraderie. We talked about the natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan and the subsequent issues with their nuclear power plant. I explained about making contacts and exchanging information, call-signs, signal reports, dealing with electricity and backup batteries and the like. The conversation went for about an hour, we talked about the SES, about HF long distanc

What use is an F-call? Recently I had the opportunity to see some amateurs operating a special event station. Among the operators were a few young faces who had come into the hobby via the Scouts. Chatting away without a worry in the world I thought about an incident that I experienced a few months ago. At the time I was set-up with my kit, parked, sitting in my car with my squid-pole making a 12 meter tall beacon for all manner of interested people to come past and ask me what I was catching with my fishing rod - which generally resulted in a good natured ribbing and a conversation about Amateur Radio, talking across the world, not unlike CB radio, building stuff and having fun. Contrast this with a man and his two young charges who wide eyed approached and shuffled about wanting to ask questions. The man was not nearly as interested, in fact his whole demeanour was negative from the start. "What is that?" the young ones asked. "Well it's a big radio antenna that I use to talk to people acr

What use is an F-call? Recently I had the opportunity to setup my radio in the bush. Having been around the metropolitan area for most of my Amateur Life to-date, that was a whole new, and I might say, very positive experience. Laying out radials across the landscape was a challenge and having set-up against the corner of the veranda of the house where I was staying meant that I could only put them out in 270 degrees, the owner frowning on the notion of running 12 meter radials through the house for some reason. The silence was amazing, no man-made noise, no clicking or buzzing from nearby appliances, overall worth the effort! Honesty requires me to point out that the local atmospherics conspired to actually making contacts on 80 and 40 meters nigh-on impossible. At the time I was unable to determine what caused the problem and research since then indicated all manner of possible causes, ranging from background cosmic noise to the LCD TV in the next room with several other options in between. Armed with t

What use is an F-call? I keep having the same conversation, almost word-for-word, over and over again. I cannot do anything with just 10 Watts, it's not enough, it's useless, I cannot make any contacts, no-one hears me, I'm wasting my time. The United Arab Emirates and Denmark, two countries far from our shores. Seemingly these two have nothing in common, other than that we share our globe with their citizens. However, these two countries were contacted by an F-call last week with a 4/9 signal report. This time it wasn't me making the contact it was another station who is free to brag about their contact to the community. I'm bring it up here because it's not just me saying that you can make contacts, it's not just me making contacts, there are many amateurs who on a daily basis make contacts across the planet. Some of them hold a foundation license. What it takes to achieve is some patience and a dose of luck. Neither of which are hard to come by or hard to achieve. Sitting at the radio for a few hours w

What use is an F-call? It's good to get inspiration and it arrives in the strangest ways at the most unexpected time. I've been pretty busy in my non-amateur radio activities over the past months. Not that you'd notice, a bit like a duck floating on a lake, the picture of serenity itself, furiously paddling under water. I have a regular activity, the VK6 F-troop which I host on behalf of Foundation Licensees across VK6 every Saturday at 8am local time. It forces me to turn my radio on and gives me an opportunity to talk to other amateurs on at the very least a weekly basis. One of the amateurs, Ronald VK6FRSK continues to throw new ideas and experiments into the air and every now and then one of them speaks to me at an unexpected level. Ronald reported listening and attempting to talk to overflying satellites and the International Space Station with a rubber-ducky antenna which gave me an unexpected thrill. I tuned to an ISS frequency and almost without effort managed to hear it overhead. I didn't have mo

What use is an F-call? Amateur Radio is a moving feast of people, coming and going, gaining interest, loosing interest, having time, running out of time. Every week there are people joining and people leaving the hobby. Fortunately the Foundation License seems to be increasing the size of the hobby quicker than the number of people leaving through choice or not. One of the things that strikes me is that there is a small group of amateurs with foundation licenses who can be heard on-air, but there is a large contingent of licensees that are hardly ever heard from. Of course it's possible that some of those F-calls never even purchased a radio, or that their circumstances changed by the time their license came through, but overall I'd expect to hear more people on air than I do. So what is stopping those new amateurs from participating? Why are they shy to push on their magical microphone key and have a go? Rather than answering the question, perhaps you might ask yourself if there is anything that you coul

What use is an F-call? A recurring theme in my conversations with other amateurs is the term Antenna, closely followed by "more power". At some point in the not too distant future I'm going to set-up two identical radios and do some power tests with the help of another amateur. In the mean time, I cannot do anything else but re-state, "It's not the power but what you do with it that matters." said in another way, "It's not what you put in to the antenna that matters, it's what comes out of the antenna that counts." So, as I said, a recurring theme, Antennas. My antenna works for me in my context, that is, in the way that I use my radio, my antenna works for me. It may well work for you too. Ironically, the internet is full of people who have built their own antenna and have gone to the trouble of describing what they built, the things they learnt and the traps they fell into. In my search for a patch-lead for my mobile wi-fi hotspot I came across a page from VK4ION who's page

What use is an F-call? In my day-to-day environment I meet lots of different people. Many of them are not Amateurs. In fact, most of them are not Amateurs. That's not to say that I cannot see that some of those people could be, and some have Amateur written all over their forehead without ever realising it. Now it's not for me to tell you to go out and convert people to Amateurs, that's your job - Hi Hi. What I'd like to look at is, "What is it that brought you into Amateur Radio?" I've said in the past that for me it came as a surprise. I knew two people, one of whom was a "known Amateur" the other not. I'd never talked about Amateur Radio with either of them. The person who is the "known Amateur" has had their license for many years, as long as I've known them, 20-odd years, likely longer, I've never gotten around to asking. The other "secret Amateur" was the one who is responsible for me becoming aware of this hobby. It all started pretty innocently, here's a WiFi

What use is an F-call? Recently I had a discussion with a Foundation Licensed amateur who told me that he'd had some limited success making contacts using 10 Watts, but that he longed to have more power to get out and make better contacts. While I understand the sentiment, I know from personal experience that it just isn't true. You don't need oodles of power to smack the audio against the receiver at the other end. What you need is propagation and you need a set-up that works. Now I'd be the first to admit that propagation is a bit of a mystery to me at the best of times, but my solution to that is to sit tight, listen and when lots of stations turn up at my door-step as it were - that is, I can hear lots of people calling - I've got a great chance at getting through. What was a little more baffling to me was that this amateur, as I said, an F-Call had not really found a way to discuss his issues with any other amateurs. He'd been pretty isolated and only in discussing the issue with other F-Calls did h

What use is an F-call? When I came out of the examination room where I'd just passed my Foundation License, after the obligatory congratulations and back slaps, I walked out into the sun and wondered: "Now what?" At the time I knew two Amateurs and had met the people in my classroom. Since then I've become an active participant in Amateur Radio. Recently I was having lunch with some other Amateurs and we were talking about how their journey evolved from graduation to their current level of involvement. The key was "Information". I've talked here about how I went about selecting a radio, an antenna and the like, but there was a step before that, one that each new Amateur needs to make and that is finding the community. Ironically, while you're listening to this, you've already found us, you already have a link to other Amateurs, but you might have graduated with other people who are not so fortunate, so firstly I'd like to encourage you to contact those people and link up with them. O

What use is an F-call? When I passed my Foundation License test I spent some months researching what equipment to buy, where to buy it from and how to configure it after I bought it. In case you're wondering, I ended up with a Yaesu 857D with a Diamond SG-7200 dual band antenna and an SGC SG-237 antenna tuner for HF. I'm not mentioning those things as a recommendation, nor am I telling you about them because I think that's the best solution. I'm telling you about them to indicate that I purchased all my gear, straight from retailers, and now use the resulting kit as my station. Last week I was at a club meeting where an Amateur of many, many years experience was holding a talk about VHF and UHF antennas that you can build in your kitchen with parts from your local hardware store. The excitement that this amateur had for making all manner of antennas was clearly evident and I came to realise that my path of buying all my gear, while successful in terms of making it on-air also left something behind, experime

What use is an F-call? Recently I was talking to a non-amateur about Amateur Radio. You know the kind of conversation, sitting around a coffee-table, talking about life, hobbies, etc. I mentionned that I was getting out and about meeting people in Amateur Radio, participating in events, learning and generally having a great time. The person I was talking to immediately responded with: "That's all too technical for me, I could never do that." And thus began a conversation that went for an hour or so on how radio works, what wave-length and frequency were, how sound is transmitted, how an antenna works, how you get a license, how much it costs and many of the mechanics related to our hobby. At no point did we talk about Ohms, or impedence or electronics as such, it was more along the lines of throwing a pebble into a lake, but at the end of the discussion there was a great deal of demystification that had taken place. It has taken a little while for me to realise, but the demystification is what ho

What use is an F-call? Recently I participated in my first amateur radio contest. In short, it was a blast! One thing I noticed was that several amateurs I speak to on-air regularly were not there and I'd heard a few people say that "Contesting is not my thing". I respect that, but I'm also a little disappointed by it because it was a lot of fun. I started thinking about it a little and wondered what else might be occurring that could account for some of this. I'm sure that part of it is that you might not actually have ever participated in a contest and it might be that you have no idea how it works, so you feel left out before you begin. Let me give you a fly-over view of a contest, not a specific one, just the notion of what's happening on air. The idea is that you count and log your contacts. Every time you make a new contact, you log the time and date, frequency and mode and of course the call-sign of the station you contacted. You also give the other station a unique number and they give yo

What use is an F-call? In 1905 George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If you're new to Amateur Radio like me, you don't remember the past because you don't know it. While I could dig up the history going back to 1900 or so, I'll encourage you instead to let your fingers do that walking and read that on the Internet yourself. One particularly interesting document I stumbled on is called "History of Radio call-signs in Australia", a must read. Having just received my foundation license, I was unaware how recent the development of an f-call actually is. In May 2004 the ACMA published a report on the "Outcomes of the Review of Amateur Service Regulation" which among many outcomes recommended the introduction of an entry-level licensing option in Australia, similar to the foundation license in the UK. The submissions at the time, over two-thirds in favour of a foundation licensing option, cited the need to make the amateur service m

What use is an F-call? Participation is a Promise made. Now what do I mean by that? A little while ago I was listening to a conversation on HF, I cannot recall the exact band, but the conversation took in amateurs across much of the country. It had been going for about 20 minutes and a new participant, an f-call, asked for a transmission report from the assembled group. The f-call, likely a new participant apologised for butting in and also commented that he was broadcasting outside his band - which at the time I checked and as far as I could tell, he wasn't. The group ignored the out-of-band comment and several dutifully and helpfully responded with their various signal reports but after about 5 minutes, the tone of the conversation changed and statements about power levels and abuse were being made. This turned into accusations about using excess power, about using 100 Watts to get across the country, about how an f-call was abusing the airwaves, mind you most of it was innuendo, nudge, nudge, wink, wink

What use is an F-call? Recently I got to thinking about this hobby of Amateur Radio. It's not like any other hobbies I've had in the past. It's different in so many ways that it took me a little by surprise. When I played with lego, electric trains or on my home computer in my teens, I was a hobbyist. I spent time, effort and money on my hobbies. When I came across another enthusiast, I exchanged ideas and findings and carried on with what I'd learned. Sometimes we combined efforts and I recall making a huge railway yard in the attic with about six friends, each of our tracks hand-marked to prevent inadvertent ownership transfer. With the age of the Internet, you'd expect that you'd see an evolution beyond that. You'd see people getting together in communities and sharing their hobby. While this does happen, much more than when I was a teenager, there are hundreds of places for each hobby, most of them insular and self-contained, region specific, language specific, what ever. Amateur Radio is different.

What use is an F-call? An article in the local paper caught my eye. It described a scenario where a local amateur with a 15m antenna mast was in the process of dealing with a local council who apparently changed their mind about the rules which govern the installation of the mast. There were quotes from neighbours who didn't like the eye-sore and it looks like this might be a challenge. While I'm not a neighbour of this amateur, I did wonder if their community was aware of the wider community role that amateurs have to play in all manner of situations. I thought about the Boxing Day Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Japanese Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami. In each of these disasters critical infrastructure such as power and communications was wiped out in the affected areas. In each of these areas local radio amateurs provided critical assistance for search and rescue and other life extending situations. I wondered if the local community where this amateur lives was aware that amateurs can, have and wi

What use is an F-call? Nothing, nothing at all. Well, that is, unless you practice. You're sure to have heard the expression, practice makes perfect. In any environment, learning about the task at hand is only a very small part of the process. The learning part for an f-call for me was spent listening to a very entertaining lecture over a weekend. There was a practical component to be sure - I keyed the microphone a couple of times, adjusted a radio, used a multi-meter and connected a PL259 to it's SO239. The vast majority of time was spent reading, listening and looking at diagrams. Another weekend and a few exams and I had a foundation license. My official practical "air-time" could be counted in minutes on the fingers of one hand. So, why do I sound so confident on air today, if all of my practical time was so short? Well, I've had experience and practice in another area. I've conducted some 1500 radio interviews, lasting from 5 to 30 minutes each, so my "air-time" is a little hig

What use is an F-call? So, you've got your shiny new f-call license. Now what? Where do you go to get your kit, what do you buy, how much should you spend? Let me start with the amount of money you should spend. It's your hobby, your wallet and your budget. You can get a radio for $20, or $2000, it all depends on how much you can afford. What I can tell you about money is that the radio is only one part of the purchase. If I look at my own set-up, less than 30% of what I spent went to the radio. My antenna represents nearly 40%, Power Supply comes in at 20%, the balance was spent on tools like a crimper and accessories like a remote microphone. I must point out that this is for a set-up that can work all bands. The antenna part of the budget consists of two antennas, a ready-made one and an antenna tuner, squid-pole, mount and a home-made ground-plane and antenna wire. I thought that it would be interesting to gather some statistics from other amateurs and I've put up a survey on the HARG site (under the F

What use is an F-call? I've now had my foundation license just over 200 days. If I had a dollar for every time I was asked: "When are you upgrading your license?" I'd be able to retire, well, at least eat out. I'm unsure about the sentiment. I understand when it's asked from a place of encouragement and improvement, but often times it appears cloaked in the notion that an f-call is merely a stepping stone to a "real license". Allow me make some observations. If I had an advanced license and I decided to engage in QRP, low power broadcasting, then I'd get accolades for my ability to get to another station on the smell of an oily rag. If I built a magnificent antenna from scratch, I'd get enquiries about the design and suggestions on improvements. If I came up with a particularly nice design for a power supply, or a filter for a generator, or any number of contributions, I'd be welcomed into the ranks of a "real amateur", whatever that might mean. You might have noticed that I c