What Use Is An F-call?

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