Low Whistle Is Not As Low As It Could Be

Dara Korra'ti, the head wrangler of the Norwescon 35 music track, made a great score (so to speak) when she got a set of traditional Irish tunes popular in sessions around the Seattle area and added an Irish session to the Norwescon music lineup. I was going through the tunes yesterday, at first by just sight-reading and humming them quietly at work, then when I got home I worked out a few on my low whistle. Some of them are a bit problematic to play in the low register because they drop below the D at the bottom of the whistle's range. This is not necessarily an insurmountable problem. For instance in the case of "Foggy Dew" I solved it by playing the song in the upper register. It gets a bit interesting when the whistle enters its third octave, but so far no glass has shattered and the neighborhood dogs didn't cry out in pain, so I think we're good. The main problem I'm still having is coping with the piper's grip. It's not as bad as it has been, and if I allow myself a few mulligans I can get through a tune, but I still have trouble sometimes making sure the holes are covered properly.

I've figured out one aid to proper finger positioning. My whistle came with a plastic thumb rest that slides up and down the barrel of the whistle. I have it positioned exactly where my left thumb should go for my left index finger to properly hit the uppermost hole using the piper's grip. I occasionally have to reposition it, though, mostly because Igor the Younger likes sliding it up and down when I let him blow the whistle. (Surprisingly, he can get about three notes out of it if I work with him on it. I may have to hunt up a standard D whistle for him one of these days.)

Call Sign, Thy Name Is Vanity (or maybe it isn't)

When I got my first ham license in 1968 you got your call sign and that was it. If you were a Novice (introductory level licensee) like I was you probably learned what your call sign was when you got a couple of pieces of promotional literature (aka junk mail) with your new call on it. In my case in early August of that year, after taking the license test just before school let out in June, I got an envelope from "The Little Print Shop, Pflugerville, Texas" addressed to me with the magic letters "WN7KPK" in the corner of the address label. Unfortunately I had to wait two more weeks for the license to arrive in the mail before I could transmit, and even then there wasn't much I could do because I didn't have a transmitter at home. I had to wait for school to start before I could run, license in hand, to Mr. Clayton's room at my junior high to fire up the Heathkit transmitter he had in the corner of the science lab and get on the air before and after school.

Someday I'll tell the story of how I got my Advanced class license. I was glad I upgraded because the Novice license had a two year term and wasn't renewable, and I upgraded after fourteen months. However when I got my envelope from the Little Print Shop this time it had the call letters "WA7KDK." When you upgraded from a Novice to a higher license you were supposed to get the same call you had before, with the "N" changed to an "A". Someone in the Licensing Bureau screwed up, though, and gave me a call that should have gone to someone else. What could I do? The government issued me the call sign, I had to stay with it.

I was WA7KDK for a couple of years until we moved to New Jersey and I had to do a change of address. Because I no longer lived in Washington, I had to change out the "7" in my call sign for a "2" (the number in your call sign indicated in what general geographical area you lived) and ended up with the call sign WA2CDK. I never really got an antenna put up in New Jersey and never used the call sign much.

In 1974 I moved back west and was eligible for a "7" call sign again. Soon after that the FCC decided to allow people who had had a call sign previously apply to have it reinstated. I wrote them a letter, explaining what had happened back in 1969, and asked if I could please be reinstated as WA7KPK. To my surprise and pleasure, they did. I've had that call sign ever since; even when I was in Texas I used "WA7KPK/5" as my call sign. Going on 40 years now. (Wow.)

Some time back the FCC created a program called the Vanity Call Sign Program, where for a fee you could apply to receive a specific call sign (with certain restrictions - no one gets a call sign with "SOS" in it, for instance). I've occasionally thought I might like a vanity call. Ever since I was a Novice I've been in awe of the old timers with what are called "1x2" call signs, like W1AW or K6ZI, and thought how cool it would be to have one of those. The 1x2 calls are all assigned now and only become available when someone dies or gets out of the hobby, and are thus very very rare. I doubt I will ever have one. But there are plenty of 1x3 call signs available, and I occasionally toy with the idea of getting one of those. There are two questions involved:

1. Should I change my call? In some ways it's a lot like changing your name. I don't think everyone sees it that way, but for some reason I do. Everyone knows me as WA7KPK. I have awards I've won that say "WA7KPK" on them. And if I gave up WA7KPK and later wanted it back, it would be just like getting any other vanity call.

2. If I do change, what would I change it to? Really, I think there are only three possibilities here. K7KPK (based on my current call sign) is available. So is K7LCL (my initials - it's very common for people to request their initials as a vanity call sign). And third, there is K7CVI.

Wait, where did that come from?

Well, you remember at the beginning of this little narrative where I mentioned the station tucked away in the corner of Mr. Clayton's science lab?

The call sign of that station was K7CVI.

My license is up for renewal anytime after September 15th, so I have a while to decide.