I was the ringleader of the first EE5E operation.
The call was in fact later retired. It was fun while it lasted. Half the
people we worked loved it, half hated it. N2NT noted that it has the same
rhythm as the Disney song “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
The problem was that in many multiop stations, intermods created by
multiple stations transmitting would create random series of short bursts
that local skimmers would interpret as dots. Often, enough dots would be
strung close enough for the skimmer to parse it into EE5E. Since these were
intermod products, they were on frequencies nowhere near the original
signals, which were not EE5E either.
People would jump on the skimmer spots and not find EE5E (or anyone else)
there. They were confused and upset at the number of bogus spots, and
eventually many skimmer-based clusters blacklisted the callsign, so even
legitimate sports were filtered out.
As the owner of the callsign began to notice that he never got spotted, the
decision was made to retire the call.
Someday I hope to visit the Cook Islands and get the E5E call. And use it
once then retire it.
My two best QSOs as EE5E were K1TO, who I called at about 50wpm and who
didn’t flinch; and OMOMM, who may or may not have appreciated the coolness.
73,
Doug K1DG
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