Great post and spot on. I grabbed my vanity calls, K9KHJ, in much the same manner. I worked in radio for a long time and one of the legendary west coast stations was KHJ. As a kid in the 70′s, the K9 calls were the old timers and were SO cool—so when I was able to put a K with my dream radio station via the vanity program—bingo.

Good post and it’s fun to search for a great set.

Danny

also, can you do CW keying with a paddle or straight key over the net somehow?

Mike’s reply;

Hi Mark, thanks for the kind words. Glad you liked the post.

I’m a no-code Extra-class ham, since I went into brain spasms every time I tried to learn the code so I’m not going to be a lot of help here. I think keying is supported through TRX manager, but I don’t know how the paddle/key hardware is supported. However TRX Manager has a very active Yahoo list — click HERE for the list. I’m sure there have been discussions about keying and that a quick search of the list would give you some ideas.

I’d found your blog today and I’ve found this post interested. Mostly because I had WZØH at one point (assigned to me by the FCC, not vanity) and eventually grew to really be annoyed with those call letters.

I don’t know whether you’re an HF guy, a SSB guy, FM/repeater guy, or a CW guy (or…). But on “phone” (voice modes) the ZØ combination usually was the culprit. My call would be mangled into WØZH too often and I finally gave into the vanity program. I’m still not completely satisfied with my current call (NØHR) as the H when sent at 40 wpm CW often comes back as S – but I guess I’m ok with it. I’ve had the call for ~7 years now, so it’s grown on me.

Anyway, nice posts here Mike. Keep it up.

73
Pat NØHR