The distance scale, reddening, and space variations of the metallicity of F stars in the solar neighborhood

The systematic effects of random errors in the distributions of the distances, reddening, and metallicity and luminosity indices of F stars from catalogs with uvby beta photometry are investigated. It is found that catalogs of F stars with V less than about 9 m contain about 30 percent reddened stars with a mean color excess of about 0.02. Due to large errors of beta and negligible reddening for these stars, it is preferable to use the distance scale based on uvby data without the dereddening procedure.