What Use Is An F-call?

What use is an F-call? In the past couple of years I've participated in several contests, and I know you might think that "contesting isn't your thing", but bear with me, I think you might be surprised. As I said, I've participated in several contests. I basically turned up, either with my own radio, or that of a club station, plugged in the aerials, and started entering logging details. There was slightly more to it than that, but overall not really. This week I've been preparing for a contest myself. I have to confess, it's a totally different animal. My preparations are about a third of the way, at least I hope they are, the contest is about a week away and I have learnt so much that I don't even know where to start. I might add, that most of the learning had nothing to do with contesting as such, more with the invisible logistics which until now had mostly taken care of by themselves, that is, someone other than me made it magically happen. So what have I been up to? Well, for starters I wa