[CQ-Contest] Callsign Advantages

[David A. Pruett]

At 01:13 PM 3/10/03 -0600, George Fremin III wrote:
>I think K is great prefix and if you are in 8 land then I really like the 
>fact that your call is K8

A K prefix sucks on phone from 8-land, at least without phonetics.  When 
you say "kay ate" it all kind of smears together; it's even worse if you 
have a KA8 prefix - "kay ay ate".  The upshot of this is that you have to 
use phonetics more than you'd like - "kilowatt" is three syllables and 
"kilo ate" has much the same problem as "kay ate".

I'm not sure the other choices are better for from 8-land: "double-yew ate" 
has too many syllables, but "whisky" is not bad, "enn ate" doesn't have 
much punch and "november ate" has two many syllables too.

Obviously, the "ate" is the problem.  Contrast this with the three-landers 
- "kay thu-ree" breaks through pretty well without phonetics - just ask K3LR...

One way around this would be to get a 2x1 callsign with a good, guttural 
letter for the second character - good choices might be G, R, Z or some such.

On CW, I don't think it matters particularly - K, N, W are not all that 
different although N is shorter.  However on CW you can have a callsign 
that does not have enough "weight" to get through - for example W0EEE.

OTOH, I think it can be very valuable to have a callsign that's different 
from everyone else, and is memorable.  George's WB5VZL was a good 
example.  In this regard, the more digits the better - the 1x2s can tend to 
sound alike.  K8KHZ is catchy and spells something, like W8CAR, W4CAT, 
etc.  But if it's hard to transmit (on any preferred mode) you might want 
something different.

Having said all that, I like my call just fine, even if "kayate" runs 
together...

73,

Dave/kayateseesee