My callsign is K5ATG and I feel that I have an interesting and fun little story behind it. Way back in the 1990's my wife and I was walking around a mall just chilling and getting out of the house for a bit. At the time you could not walk five feet without someone asking you to fill out a survey. There was this one guy that just would not leave us alone. He was about as fun as a splinter in the eye. My concern was that I did not want the company that was doing the survey giving out my information. The last time I had filled out a survey, my mailbox was filled up daily by Fingerhut catalogs, remember Fingerhut? This guy guaranteed that his company would never ever commit a such dastardly and evil act.
My wife who is much more tolerant of people than I am finally gave in and had me fill out the stinking survey. I don't even remember what the survey was even about. Probably about how do I feel about some jabroni bugging me about filling out a survey. The 1990s had a lot of crap about expressing your feelings and such. Anyway since I was told by my wife to feel out the survey, I decided to express my feelings in a subtle way. I filled out the survey, however, in the name part I put my name as Aaron The Great. I showed my wife but the survey guy never caught on.
About a month later I was watching tv and my wife came in and threw several envelopes at me. She did not know if she should yell at me about it, or laugh her but off. Every one of the envelopes was addressed to Aaron the Great. That was proof that the jabroni's company gave out my info because that was the only time that I used that name. The next few months I was getting everything from address labels to credit card offers for Aaron the Great. At least I thought that it was some funny stuff. Here was are nearly 30 years later I still get stuff in the mail for Aaron the Great.
In 2013 I got my amateur radio technician license and my FCC-issued call sign was KF5VBV. A year later I upgraded to general class and threw my luck into the wind and checked the little box on my license application for a new random callsign. My luck ran out as I was given the call sign KG5EYK. It was not a very good call sign in my book. So I decided to get myself a vanity call. A lot of the ones that I tried to get were already taken. I was discussing it with my family and someone said try K5ATG for Aaron the Great. So I checked it and no one was using it, it was easy to say and remember and it had a nice story behind it. So I became Aaron the Great.
As always you can leave any comments in the comments section below or you can contact me directly at Aaron@K5ATG.com
72/73
Aaron K5ATG
I have a similar funny story. My wife and I sent anniversary flowers to my son and daughter-in-law. Our family name is New. So when the flower shop asked me what to put on the card, I said, "Happy Anniversary, to the New News from the Old News." A few hours later, my son called and asked if we had sent them flowers. I said, "Of course." So he said, "Well then, how come it says 'to the New Moose from the Old Moose'?" So since then I've been known as The Old Moose.
ReplyDeleteAnd my callsign is also a vanity call, now. It was originally WN4SBE, my randomly-picked (by the FCC) Novice call from 1970, and later, WB4SBE, my coordinated upgrade call when I upgraded to Advanced the next year. I kept WB4SBE, even though I had moved to Michigan (8-land) in 1982, until I finally got my Extra in 2005 and wanted to shorten my call. So I found N8SBE was available, and took it. SBE can stand for many things, but it is mostly recognized by hams as Side Band Engineering from back in the 70's. They made a couple of HF transceivers that tended to drift and had microphonics, so not very good radios even for the time. The other thing that comes to a lot of folks' minds is the Society of Broadcast Engineers, of which I've never been a member. Finally, a doctor from Florida I contacted on 20M many years ago, told me it was an abbreviation for a throat infection Subacute Bacterial Endocarditis.
73,
-- Dave, N8SBE
What a great story, thank you for sharing. It's funny how such random unplanned event can turn into some of the most cherished memories.
ReplyDelete