Hi Guru!
You must mean me ? EA2IF de K6YK K
HAHA !
73
John
You forgot about Eric F5JKKK but F5JKK K (another very keen SOTA Chaser)
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I think having a J in your call is quite good. When there are several people calling, Ericās call stands out because of di-dah-dah-dah in the middle. Itās a ābusyā callsign and is quite prominent. If he sends it twice in succession then the F stands out as having heard J in a busy call Iām thinking F5ā¦ Another J call is Stephanās DL3JPN, that is long and busy and whilst the DL3 is quite common the fact his call goes on for a bit again helps it stand out.
Itās nice that there are more EA chasers now but they do cause my brain to stutter because I am so used to hearing EA then 2 without thinking then I concentrate on the suffix that when I hear EA7 for EA7GV I mentally say āhey thatās not EA2ā and have lost sync with his sending and have to go around again. 
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G4OBK never makes me doubt because Phil is a top class operator and he sends with the right spacing between all the callsign letters.
K6YK would never make me doubt because I know there are no US callsigns with just one letter preffix AND one letter suffix. They are either one letter preffix OR one letter suffix, but never both.
But, what if someone sends for instance DH4THK in a non perfect spacing way?
You get in doubt:
Is DH4TH calling and sending a K at the end or is DH4THK calling?
When spacing is perfect, thereās little doubt.
Sending those problematic K-ending callsings twice, also clears up any doubt, as DH4THK DH4THK is totally different to DH4TH DH4TH K.
However, copying eveything perfectly is not always possible in a pileup.
73,
Guru
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One bad habit I try to iron out at the CW School is the error sign: . . . . . . . .
Sending exactly 8 dits is hard at any speed, so most hams give up and just send a few dits. Which is fine in principle, I think 8 dits is not a good way of signalling error. If 3 or 4 dits are spaced out well, then itās clear enough that it means a mistake was made. Some students, however, donāt leave long enough pauses at the best of times and end up sending H when they make a mistake; not best practice in my opinion. I have started to introduce some cadence into my error sign, so that the gap between dits actually increases and the flow slows down. I think itās then more apparent that I made a mistake and intend to re-start. Iām not sure cadencing is a good idea in every situation, it could get a bit much after a while. The one thing we emphasise at the Graz CW school is letter and word spacing. Longer pauses never adversely affect meaning, but too short a pauseā¦ Well, we all know what that results in 
.
73 de OE6FEG
Matt
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Fully agree. I never do the 8 dots, rather 3 spaced out dots.
I think that in SOTA pileups nobody sends āKā very often anyhow.
Maybe if the activator and chaser are all alone and the signals are poor copy maybe one or the other might send āKā just to help the other station know itās his turn.
As far as confusing callsigns, there used to be a āKY6Kā and āK6YKā calling in the same pileup many times. Iāll bet the DX station was thinking, "what the heck? ".
73,
John
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There is a VK1AD and VK1DA and both are called Andrew and both active in SOTA.
So no chance of confusion there
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Yeah, āOnly the VK1 come back againāā¦ Still a pileup.
Whoops, I hear G4OBK and other Europeans calling WB2FUV
on 20M. Really strong today.
73
John
At the last Morse Boot Camp I got to (near Hereford early last year) the instructor recommended we use the ādouble iā way of signalling an error/correction. It seemed to me he sent the two ditdits with a distinctive space between them that was neither āiiā nor āi iā, but that may just be me. I certainly found it more emphatic than eight ditsā¦
Thatās about the only prominent thing I have in my callsign. Not a J but a 2 (dit dit dah dah dah).
The rest is just too short and fast-to-be-sent to protrude in the pileup. Thatās why I use to send my call twice.
Another sotari with a fast-to-be sent callsign is EI5HJ. It was a bit hard sending his callsign the first time he chased me, but now that he has become a regular chaser for me, I like copying and sending his callsign.
73,
Guru
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This thread just goes on and on!
The regular CW chaser-activators, regular chasers and the more regular activators such as the many prolific HB9 and OE and other sotari will always have the edge on pulling the calls out of the pile when they are on the hill themselves - they are used to hearing the same calls day in day out. In some cases they listen to this caccophony for several hours a day while chasing, or if they have no full time job, we see these guys activating themselves on an almost daily basis - bravo to them! You can hear the performance on the air by just listening. It is often beautiful to behold, the operation just flows, even using QRP and the often inevitable QRM they run the pile up well and through their experience, discipline is seemingly better maintained amongst the horde of callers.
So what better way than to learn - spend as much time if you can, listening to the activations, even if you donāt join in, and do it every day. By doing this you will become familiar with the procedures to enable quick efficient contacts and when you join in amongst the throng you will have more confidence and a fair understanding of the procedures used. Most of the SOTA operation in CW is similar to contest operation with the addtion of minimal chat, christian names and the odd KN/73/SK/VA EE added for good measure!
73 Phil
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No detriment to any of you, There are some really good operators out there but in my humble opinion Gurusā EA2IF is the best Iāve ever heard.
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Not sure whether this is a good place for the following rant, but during my activation of DL/AL-108 today, I must say that I really had to fight hard with the calling crowd, and in the end, the fruitless attempts to inject a non-matching callsign when I clearly asked for specific regions or incomplete calls was not fun. In fact, I was in no real hurry and could have handled twice as many QSOs without the many battles.
It might have been propagation, of course, but my impression was that the pandemics has taken its toll on all of our nerves, and people are eager to get some SOTA QSOs going.
73 de Martin, DK3IT
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Itās frustrating whenever these situations occur.
Chasers not respecting the way the activator wants to deal with the pileup only results in activator frustration and chasers not making the QSOs.
These indisciplined chasers usually want to rule the way the activator operates, but the activator should always keep firmly to his/her own method not letting the indisciplined win and penalise to the rest of the pileup, even if that implies a high cost of fewer QSOs in the log.
The indisciplined chasers will finally adopt the activator method if they see him/her firmly holding to it.
Thatās the only way to make them learn.
73,
Guru
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I heard the same type of disrespectful activity listening in on people trying to work the 12 Days Of Christmas SES on SSB. People would be calling out in the middle of a QSO and not respecting the runner when he asked for a partial call. Apparently they were only hearing one side of the conversation and not waiting until the runner called QRZ.
I tried to work a few SSB stations and wasted about 40 minutes. Finally caught a CW station and worked them in 3 minutes. Love the dits and dahs!