What use is an F-call?
208 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 9 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingStarting in the wonderful hobby of Amateur or HAM Radio can be daunting. Using low power with little experience is challenging but can be very rewarding. Every week I look at a different aspect of the hobby, how you as a beginner might fit in and get the very best from the 1000 hobbies that Amateur Radio represents. Note that this podcast continues as "Foundations of Amateur Radio".
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Episodes
This is a community
June 25, 2011 17:00 - 3 minutes - 5.93 MBWhat use is an F-call? An experience on a local mailing list this week made me consciously consider for the first time that I am a member of a community in Amateur Radio. Now this might sound completely obvious to you, but consider this, Amateur Radio as we know it today has been around for over 100 years. I've just downloaded the first Annual Official Wireless Blue Book, updated to May of 1909. It's a call book. You'd recognise it instantly. In it's 19 pages it lists call-signs, locations a...
Welcome to the hobby.
June 18, 2011 17:00 - 2 minutes - 5.08 MBWhat use is an F-call? This week I'd like to share with you an experience I had on air a couple of days ago. I was tuned to 7.093 and I called CQ DX at about 4pm in the afternoon. I'd been listening on all bands for most of the afternoon and finally was beginning to hear some movement on 40 meters. There had been contests happening on all manner of frequencies, near and far, but for some reason or another, I wasn't getting through. There were a couple of hams having a chin wag a little furth...
7130dx net and phonetics
June 11, 2011 17:00 - 2 minutes - 5.23 MBWhat use is an F-call? Over the past few weeks I've been encouraging you to listen to the news, to get on-air and participate. It's easy enough for me to say, but I can understand that it might not be so simple for you to actually achieve. Imagine for a moment that you have at least got the pre-requisites, that is, you have a license, you have a radio, antenna, power-supply, it's all plugged in and when you move the dial, you can hear stations. I realise that this assumes a whole lot of thi...
Buying your Kit
June 04, 2011 17:00 - 2 minutes - 4.14 MBWhat use is an F-call? Firstly I should thank all those f-calls that contributed to the call-back last week. If you know of any f-calls that are not listening to the broadcast, tell them about it and who knows what might happen. When I started this hobby I did what I am beginning to suspect many newcomers to the field did. I asked around what things to do and who to talk to, then I made my first purchases. I've now spent some of my hard-earned money and to-date I'm very happy about what I ...
Be Brave
May 28, 2011 17:00 - 2 minutes - 4.98 MBWhat use is an F-call? Last week I discussed the idea that having an f-call is like having a key to the front-door, or like the first step towards gaining a pilot license. You may think while you're listening to me talk that I've been in Amateur Radio for years and that I have all the HAM experience in the world. The opposite is true. While I have a long history in broadcast radio, that is, I'm not afraid to open my mouth in front of a microphone, and I'm not afraid to participate in publi...
This is step 1 of the hobby
May 21, 2011 17:00 - 1 minute - 3.36 MBWhat use is an F-call? When I was learning to fly an aeroplane my instructor at the time told me that every pilot has to do something called "Going Solo", that's flying on your own for the first time. It's not the end of instruction, it's one in the path towards becoming a pilot. He also told me that this was true for pilots flying Cessna's, Boeing 747's and Space-Shuttles. The same is true for your f-call. The time you've spent learning how Amateur Radio works, where things are written dow...
Your F-call can do more than you think.
May 14, 2011 17:00 - 1 minute - 1.06 MBWhat use is an F-call? Last week I was talking to an amateur in Esperance from Fremantle on 21MHz and he was bemoaning the notion that he needed to upgrade his license because with 10 Watts you couldn't do much. Little did he know that the week before I was sitting in exactly the same spot with my puny little f-license as he thought of it and I was talking to Portland, Oregon. I was listening on 7.146 and a CQ came out from a call-sign I didn't recognise and I answered and sure enough an a...
Welcome
May 07, 2011 17:00 - 45 seconds - 1.4 MBWhat use is an F-call? This podcast started life in 2011 when I was asked to record a story I shared during the production of the weekly amateur radio news in Western Australia. I'd been a licensed radio amateur, or ham, for a few months and found myself surrounded by people who perceived the basic Australian foundation amateur licence wasn't worth anything. What use is an F-call? is my response to that sentiment. It's produced weekly. In 2015 after long deliberation it was renamed to Fou...