Hi,
I spotted a couple of SOTA activators on SOTAwatch a few minutes ago with an interesting suffix having double meanning in Spanish:
@HB9FUE
FUE in Spanish can be either the past tense of the verb “to be”: WAS
or the past tense of the verb “to go”: WENT
@DL3TU
TU in Spanish can be either the personal pronoun YOU when written like this: TÚ
or the posesive pronoun YOUR, when written as it is in Roman’s suffix: TU
Cheers,
Guru
Thanks for the hint, Guru. I never looked at my call sign from that perspective 
I was allowed to chose my call sign. Even though it is not mandatory any more, I wanted the suffix to indicate my region. So the first letter had to be “S” or “T” (Oberpostdirektion Stuttgart).
My only requirements were: The call should be short (no numbers 0,1,9) and have no single dot at the end as it can easily vanish in QSB. “3TU” was available and I liked the sound in CW.
However, I soon discovered that always using the full call sign is a must. Just saying “TU” if I want the DX-OP to correct my suffix is not a good idea 
73, grs, Roman
Very right indeed!
Just saw an alert for tomorrow by EA5EX/P
It made me look twice!
Hi,
Mine is as simple as my name/surname intials EA4MZ = Moises Zafra
73 Moises
EA4MZ
The original SMS spotter spots were posted by SMSBOT but it was changed to SMS as a number of people wanted to know who SM5BOT was and how he was able to hear and hence spot UK VHF activations 
My own call is fairly boring TW being my initials and WX for weather. I am a retired professor of Atmospheric Science (Texas A&M). However I have run across some K9 calls that made me look twice. (K9 = “dog” in English). I can recall K9VD, K9BBQ and K9BM.
Yesterday, I activated a couple of SOTAs in my area and I was chased by Fabio @IK2LEY.
While we were making our QSO, I suddenly realised that Fabio’s suffix has a meaning in Spanish and I immediately thought about posting here to let you know.
Here it is: LEY in Spanish means LAW
However, I don’t think we will have to necessarily obbey Fabio… 
(just kidding)
73,
Guru
Mmmm…“Everybody in pile-up, shut up! I go first!” Sounds good… 
LEY has a meaning in English as well, which is appropriate for SOTA - a direct line between your two summits defining S2S!
73
Adrian
Hallo Fabio
The first time I read your call, it reminded me of a wine I have a few bottles of in the cellar.
(Maybe I’m sick: if I don’t have at least 100 bottles of different wine in my cellar, I feel naked - although I live in a wine region in Germany usually most are sangiovese or roero arneis 
).
73 Armin
Would you like to adopt the Awards Manager? 
If he adopted the Awards Manager he wouldn’t have a 100 bottles in his cellar for very long!
Remembering W6JDP, “Jack Dempsey’s Punch” and W6GWI, the "Great Whisky Inhaler"
Every time I see the call 'IK2LEY" I think of ilkley in Yorkshire and sing a song… “On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at”
Fond memories from when I lived there back in the early 90’s…
Now in the USA, with call N2GBR I’m locally known as 'Great Britain Rules"… 
Richard…
When I was 15 years old and passed the Novice license (the entry-level license in the US), I was issued WN8ICQ. When I upgraded six months later the callsign automatically was changed to WB8ICQ and I’ve kept it ever since through 7 geographic moves and two more license upgrades.
At first I found it burdensome. I was convinced that I was missing any DX station with marginal copy, as the DX station would conclude “Oh, that guy isn’t calling me, he’s calling CQ! Time to move on…”
More recently I’ve decided that “I CQ” is a distinctive call sign and I am proud to have it.
Had a good friend for many years who got me interested in doing more CW (recent Silent Key) who had the call “K9LB - Dog Pound”. A high school friend had the call “N4VVV”; we always had to use phonetics if on the local repeater at the same time. As a coincidence, was able to work the new holder of the call (on CW). We then exchanged emails and he got quite the chuckle out of the story.
My initial call was N4VBV, liked it and never changed. Now that I do more CW it does get a few chuckles on the air, but is really easy to send. Even if there are a few repeat requests.
Mike, N4VBV
Hi,
What you all describe has some importance in a complete different way:
It helps to memorise a callsign after hearing it just once, which speeds up things in making and logging qso.
So for example if I would hear HB9LKW I would just need to keep in mind Switzerland and the picture of a lorry to get the callsign ok.
Something different the Nummernschild in Germany, the car registration plate, same mechanism, in Germany not a random thing but first letters indicate the city/region where the car is registered.
Something like HSK= Hochsauerlandkreis, M = Munich
That’s exactly right. Now, after so many QSOs with Bruno @HB9CBR, I don’t need to think of it, but in the begining, I mentally associated his suffix to this:
Also, working DXCC helps a lot to mentally associate Countries and preffixes. If you call me in the pileup and I pick up your callsign, I don’t need to remember ON, all I think is Belgium and the ON preffix cames out automatically.
73,
Guru
