One of the rather unusual challenges I’ve been dealing with since getting on the air is that since my signal is often down in the noise, my call sign is very difficult to hear. Even phonetically, it gets misheard quite a bit. The “Yankee” in “Kilo Charlie Seven Romeo Yankee Sierra” is constantly mis-heard as any number of things.
“Was that Kilo Charlie Seven Radio… NANCY Sierra?”
Now since when is Nancy an ITU phonetic! But I digress. I had enough problems with it that I decided to take advantage of the Vanity Call Sign System. I wanted a Region 7 Call Sign, and I wanted it starting with a Kilo or a Whiskey, and since K7RLF was taken, I ended up with W7RLF.
It fits nicely since RLF is my initials. Who know, this whole time, my middle name was Lima?