Amateur radio call signs
Amateur radio call signs are allocated to amateur radio operators around the world. The call signs are used to legally identify the station or operator, with some countries requiring the station call sign to always be used and others allowing the operator call sign instead.[1]
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) allocates call sign prefixes for radio and television stations of all types. Since 1927 these have been used to uniquely identify operators and locate amateur stations within a geographical region or country of the world. Call signs meant for amateur radio follow the ITU's Article 19, specifically 19.68 and 19.69.[2]
Prefixes are assigned internationally, and a separating numeral plus suffix are added by a national body to produce this unique identifier. These prefixes are agreed upon internationally, and are a form of country code. Each country must only assign call signs to its nationals or operators under its jurisdiction that begin with the characters allocated for use in that country or its territories.
In some countries, an operator may also select their own "vanity" call sign that conforms to local laws.[3] Some jurisdictions require a fee to obtain such a vanity call sign; in others, such as the UK, a fee is not required and the vanity call sign may be selected when the license is applied for. The FCC in the U.S. discontinued its fee for vanity call sign applications in September 2015.[4]
In the US, the Federal Communications Commission's authority to impose and collect fees is mandated by Congress.
Effective April 19, 2022, a $35 application fee applies to new, renewal, rule waiver, and modification applications that request a new vanity call sign.
Some call sign block ranges are unassigned by the ITU, e.g. the 1AA–1ZZ and QAA-QZZ blocks. Any call sign used by an amateur in these unassigned block ranges usually had it assigned to them by a group with an unrecognized national claim. Unless otherwise noted, they have no value for DXCC awards, nor are they valid under UK license conditions.[22]
In addition, during their period of independence from the Republic of South Africa, which lasted in some cases from 1976 to 1994, the Bantustans had prefixes not recognized by the international community. These were:
DXCC entities and IOTA[edit]
Amateur radio call sign prefixes almost always locate an operator within one of the 300+ DXCC entities in the world.
Any country or ITU prefix assignment can have many entities within it. For example, in the United States Hawaii (with 'H' as the second character of the prefix and '6' as the separating numeral) and Alaska (with 'L' as the second letter of the prefix) are considered different DXCC entities, as are Sable Island and St. Paul Island in Canada.
The DX Century Club (DXCC) is an amateur radio operating award given by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) to operators making contact with 100 or more geographic entities around the world. As such, the ARRL keeps a list of DXCC entities (not necessarily a country) for this purpose.[34] This list includes deleted entries and prefixes and the dates in which contacts with them will be counted towards the award.
The DXCC List is based upon Clinton B. DeSoto's landmark 1935 QST article defining a "country" as a discrete geographical entity.[35] A geographical portion of one country can be a separate DXCC entity if it is an exclave or an island or group of islands significantly distant from the main part of the national entity.
IOTA is a radio amateur abbreviation for "Islands on the Air". It refers to a list of saltwater islands worldwide maintained by the Radio Society of Great Britain, which assigns a unique code to an island or group of islands, like EU-005 for Great Britain, OC-001 for Australia etc.[36][37] IOTA codes are not part of the callsign, although some callsign blocks correspond uniquely to an IOTA code, like EA6: EU-004 – Balearic Islands, SV5: EU-001 – Dodecanese Islands, etc. In many other cases there is no direct relation between the callsign and the IOTA code.
Vanity call signs[edit]
Individual amateurs may want a callsign with their name or initials embedded, callsigns that had been held by family members or friends, or callsigns that they themselves formerly held (and gave up for whatever reason). Some people want a callsign that is shorter, or easier to pronounce, or just "fits their personality" better. CW (Morse code) operators might want a callsign that "sounds good" or is short when sent in Morse. (This is referred to as "CW weight".)
Radio amateur clubs will sometimes request specific callsigns in memoriam of deceased members (silent keys); G5RV is held by a British club in memory of the inventor of the G5RV antenna. Some request callsigns which reflect specific interests or modes of operation (such as VE3QRP for a low-power radio club in Ontario). The USS Batfish, a museum ship in Muskogee, Oklahoma, has callsign WW2SUB; the USS Oklahoma is commemorated as WW2OK.[38] The Battleship USS Missouri has the call sign KH6BB; VO1TAP is a callsign belonging to the Grassroots Amateur Radio Club, commemorates the anniversary of the USS Truxtun and USS Pollux Naval disaster off the coast of Newfoundland; VO1MCE the callsign of the Irish Loop Amateur Radio Club at the Myrick Wireless Interpretation Centre in Newfoundland, commemorates Cape Race Marconi station MCE as the first point of radio contact in the New World for Titanic. The National World War I Museum and Memorial, at the Liberty Memorial, in Kansas City, Missouri, has the call sign WW1USA.
Various "special event" callsigns are issued for periods ranging from a day to a month, either for individual radio contest days or commemoration of specific current or historic events. GB100MGY commemorated the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic (Marconi station MGY);[39] 2O12 and 2O12L commemorated the 2012 Olympic Games in the United Kingdom.
Occasionally, a radio club will obtain a shorter callsign for a day; the U.S. FCC issues calls as short as 1 × 1 (with "K1D" being a popular choice) for individual events. These callsigns are not permanent and are quickly reassigned to other stations for subsequent events.[40]
A well-known short callsign is JY1, which belonged to Hussein of Jordan, who served as that nation's king.
Ham radio operators in the United States may apply for a specific callsign, including calls from other zones, so long as they have the appropriate license class for the desired callsign format.[41] The callsign must conform to the prefix standard assigned to that area. The U.S. also ties callsigns to license class: an Amateur Extra might have W0OL (which is a "1 × 2" call), but a General-class licensee could not, because 1 × 2 calls are reserved for the Amateur Extra class. Likewise, a ham on the mainland could not get a callsign beginning with the KH6 prefix, which is assigned to Hawaii, although a radio amateur who moves to a different call sign district within the same country is able to keep his or her original callsign.
In Canada, a "2 × 3" call (a format with two letters, a number, three letters, like VE1ZZZ) may be freely requested from a list of available calls; the shorter "2 × 2" call has a waiting period in many provinces.