Applied For Vanity Call Sign Last Night

YuccaFlatsRanch · #1 06/27/12, 12:06 PM

"Red Sheep Radio" is in the beginnings stages of development. I applied for my vanity call sign last night and listed 12 possible calls with N5BAA, K4BAA, N0BAA being at the head of the list. There were 5 more calls with suffix BAA and four calls with suffix BAH on the list. Now to wait approx 18 days and I should have a new call. KF5QBG is just too cumbersome, especially in CW. N5BAA in code is _ . ..... _... ._ ._ KF5QBG would have been _._ .._. ..... _ _._ _... _ _.

The call ending in ._ ._ is unique enough to be picked up out of a pile up easily, thus making contacts somewhat easier to make. I am told that many times the uniqueness and/or repetitiveness of a call helps you get picked out of a group responding to a wanted CQ. On phone, I would probably pick out BAA as something possibly interesting to talk to someone about. I know on Field Day, everyone seemed to want to talk to W7PIG. Talking to the PIG was oinkingly fun.

For voice call signs a call sign with the letters P (PaPa phonetically) and T (Tango) at the end punch through a pile up. Both PaPa and Tango both have additional "force" when spoken.

There seems to be some "tricks" to getting heard and remembered. Sometimes when a pile up has occurred around a desired contact the station calling CQ may only get your last 2-3 letters of your call sign and then will respond "Go Ahead station calling ending in AA or BAA. I would then come back with "this is N5BAA, N5BAA over" He would acknowledge and we would exchange info to complete the QSL.

YuccaFlatsRanch · #2 06/27/12, 12:14 PM

Forgot to define "Pile Up" for non-Hams. A pile up occurs when someone (usually a hard to find station from an obscure area) has Transmitted CQ (seek you) and a large number of stations reply at the same time. Lots of parts of each stations call sign get garbled as the stations "Pile UP" all talking all over each other at the same time. The station calling CQ has the decision as to which call to respond to. Obviously he has to remember something about that call sign to respond to and if he can't get the whole call sign, at least he might get an easy to remember portion of the call.

Bret · #3 06/27/12, 12:56 PM

Does this make you a Country Ham? Good luck.

AngieM2 · #4 06/27/12, 01:08 PM

Good luck on the vanity call sign of your choice. I like the BAA aspects.

YuccaFlatsRanch · #5 06/27/12, 02:39 PM

"I like the BAA aspects." Besides being able to easily pick this call suffix out of a crowd on the radio there are so many possibilities for QSL cards and that's what makes it fun for me so far in the radio world. I have virtually no experience, but had a great time at Field Day and am looking forward to getting my radio - saving money for an ICOM IC-7410 HF/50Mhz radio. I am going to pair the radio at first with a Carolina Windom antenna that covers 80-10 meters with some gain, my Discone 2000 antenna for a 2 meter rig and a 6 meter antenna of some sort (HenTenna possibly). Once 160 meters opens up again I will string a half wavelength dipole up for 160 meters.

I am going to get a guy who lives down the road from me bring his BobCat with an Auger over and drill me some 3 foot deep holes in the ground for 4-6 30 foot telephone poles with an additional mast on each that will be about 15-16 feet high to allow me to get the antennas up about 40 feet from the ground. The higher the better.

PNP Katahdins · #6 06/27/12, 02:40 PM

Good luck getting your new call, I see it just became available. Trust me, it would really be nice if you could stay with a 5 call since you are in Texas. That to me would be the first priority. Or upgrade to Extra so you could get NB5AA.or WB5AA which should both be available.

CW is so cool. We tell any interested kids that it's a secret language. Our club's Field Day CW station always makes more contacts than the voice station.

Red Sheep Radio. How about K5RSR? Great phonetics.

73 de Peg

YuccaFlatsRanch · #7 06/27/12, 06:53 PM

But I was born in region 4, and have lived in half of the other regions too. I have only not lived in 2,3,8,9. I have all the others covered. I hope to get the 5 region call. As far as I can tell, I am the only one who has applied for it.