What Use Is An F-call?

What use is an F-call? For a little while now I’ve been working towards obtaining my DXCC, contacting 100 countries. When I talk about it, often the first question is, how many contacts have you made? I’m always a little ashamed to admit that I’ve yet to make my first. Often I then get lots of helpful advice on what to do. Let me share with you what I’ve been doing since I made the commitment to obtain my Low Power, or QRP DXCC. As I said at the time, I don’t know if this is going to take a week, a month, a year or a decade, but I intend to get there, if not for others, but for myself as a personal challenge. My first quest along this road was to get on-air. I started thinking that I would do this from my car, set-up my mobile vertical at a suitable location and just start making QSO’s. I spent a fair amount of time scouting for locations, found a few to test and after sitting for a couple of days in these spots a number of things became apparent to me. My antenna, as great as it is, is a pain to set-up