Find on this site... Site Index  ·Classes ·Exams ·Clubs ·Hamfests ·Addresses    Search site:    Call sign search:   ARRL Member Login... Username:   Password:    Register    Forgot userid/password?  Quick Links... ·Join or Renew ·Catalog & Store ·ARRL Courses ·Classifieds ·Getting Started

Operating Activities Licensing News/Bulletins Services Education Public Service Support Donate to ARRL ARRL Info Text-only

Current Feature Articles   Mar 19 Surfin': Hodgepodge Is Just Another Word for Mishmash   Mar 16 The Radio Amateur’s Hand Book by Archie Frederick Collins   Mar 12 Surfin': Do You Hear What I Hear?   Mar 08 The ARRL Second Homebrew Challenge -- And the Winners Are...   Mar 05 Surfin': Using the Internet as a Public Service Radio Scanner   Mar 04 Amateur Radio Quiz: Workbench Wisdom   Mar 01 ARRL In Action: What Have We Been Up to Lately?   Mar 01 It Seems to Us: Emergency Preparedness and the FCC Rules   Feb 26 Surfin': Hamming Your Way to Fame   Feb 24 ARDF Update: Foxes, Fitness and Fun in 2010 ARRL Products: History/Adventure (More) Don C. Wallace: W6AM, Amateur Radio's Pioneer -- This book traces the life of Don Wallace and with it the early history of Amateur Radio. Crystal Clear: The Struggle for Reliable Communications Technology in World War II -- Now Shipping! -- A story of the quartz crystal—a technology that changed the tide of World War II. World War II Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion -- A story about ham radio operators and others who helped ease worries during a time of war. Edgar Harrison -- Now Shipping! -- A remarkable story of Edgar Harrison and the extraordinary adventures he encountered throughout World War II. TEN-TEC: The First 40 Years 1968-2008 -- An exciting glimpse of Ten-Tec's first 40 years in the world of communications.

Previous: Surfin': QSL?

Next: ARRL Welcomes KH6HU as "Big Project" Coordinator

Seldom does a randomly selected gift meet the full expectations of its recipient. FCC sequentially assigned Amateur Radio call signs are no exception. With the advent of the vanity call sign program, hams now can exercise their own notions of what constitutes a proper call sign.

Anthony Luscre, K8ZT.

You've decided to change your call sign. Maybe you just upgraded your license, moved to a new call area, or simply decided that you want a shorter call. Perhaps you want something easier to use in contests, a call that is easier for your friends to remember, or just plain don't like the way your call sounds or looks.

Hams treat call signs with a special reverence, attaching a whole personality to a short sequence of numbers and letters, so changing your call can be an intimidating event. No matter what your reason, several resources are available to help with your task.

Web Sites

Let's start with Internet Web sites. Amateur Vanity Call Sign Headquarters sponsored by Michael Carroll, N4MC, provides four valuable lists: Latest Vanity Calls lists recently granted call signs; Immediately Available Call Signs is nicely sorted by suffix and lists call signs that are canceled, expired, or not active; Soon to be Available Call Signs lists those that have been cancelled or expired; Invalid Call Signs lists those call signs that do not comply with FCC guidelines. There is a link to those guidelines.

The FCC vanity call sign Web page describes the Amateur Station vanity call sign system. It includes instructions for filing requests electronically and has links to the rest of the FCC sites.

The ARRL Web site explains various aspects of the vanity call sign system, including the fee (now $14 but set to drop to $12 in September) and how to pay it, plus complete instructions for filing on-line or on paper using FCC Form 605. (The FCC now gives equal processing priority to electronic and paper vanity applications.--Ed.) It has links to other useful Web sites as well.

The Ideal Call Sign

What constitutes an ideal call sign? To paraphrase, we might say that the beauty of the vanity call sign often is in the eye of the (be)holder. There is no universal ideal call sign, of course. Everyone's choice will be personal to them and limited by the group of available call signs--based on license class, geographic location, previously issued call signs, etc. Your first step should be to check the N4MC site for available and soon-to-be available call signs.

In general, we can divide the search for an ideal call sign search into three categories based on the applicant's reason for wanting a new call sign. I call them, Personalized, Cute, and Optimized-Characters.

Personalized call signs can include such things as initials, names or nicknames, location, favorite operating mode or club name. Selection is usually pretty easy. Simply browse through available call signs to see if one matching your choice is available. To increase your chances of finding something that matches, check various permutations and combinations, such as K3JIM, KJ3IM, WQ5RP--not just suffixes.

Cute choices can include a wide variety of calls that are visually appealing (W0XX), phonetically interesting or humorous (K4BFT--"big fat turkey"), actual initials (K4FBI, W6USN), acronyms (K2LED) or words and abbreviations (K8PIE, K4YL, K7OM). Often the numerals 1 and 0--visually similar to I and O--are used to spell cute combinations, such as K1TE or K0RN.

Optimized-Character call signs are those in which the sequence of letters and numbers is easier to send, easier to receive, or allows for quicker exchanges. O-C call signs can be the most challenging to select, as criteria can be very subjective and personal. I stewed for long time before selecting my own O-C call sign. I finally made up a spreadsheet and ranked all the potential call signs according to a number of categories, then ranked their scores.

Criteria

I used criteria collected from a number of sources, including articles by experienced contesters and DXers, phonetics studies, psychology and learning studies, graphic arts, marketing studies, personal experience and subjective input from fellow hams. These criteria were:

1. Number of characters.
2. Number of CW elements--total dits and dahs.
3. Total length of weighted characters--total number of dits x 1, plus the total number of dahs x 3.
4. Visual appearance--how will it look on a QSL card or on vehicle license plates.
5. Letter clarity--without phonetics. For example, the letters B, D, and E, tend to sound alike, whereas letters like R, X, and O have their own unique sounds and are easier to distinguish.
6. Phonetic clarity--how the call sign sounds phonetically and how easy each phonetic is to pronounce.
7. Emphasis--letters for DX pileups in CW and SSB. Hard consonants sound best on SSB at the end of a call sign, and a call sign ending with a dah is considered preferable in CW. But some letters, such as K, can be mistaken for prosigns (K = invitation to transmit, the "go ahead" signal) instead of the last letter of a call sign.
8. CW rhythm. I put various call signs into my keyer's memory and played them back at various speeds to rank their desirability.

The author's QSL card, showing the call sign he chose by applying his criteria.

Other criteria you could use include the difficulty in sending a letter in CW, letters that might be difficult in certain foreign languages, and similarity to well-known call signs. I rated my call sign choices 1-10, best to worst. I determined the basis for each category--either subjectively or by numerical value, depending on criteria--then came up with an average score for each call sign. Finally, I put this all together onto an Excel spreadsheet. Try it yourself. It's fun!

This may sound obsessive--and my wife told me it definitely was--but I had my original call sign for 19 years before changing it for my present one. Now that I've gone through this process, I hope I won't need to pick another one anytime soon.

Once you have selected and ranked your candidate call signs, you can proceed to apply for a vanity call sign--the FCC application lets you list, in order of preference, up to 25 call sign choices--and pay your fee. Then, you hope the FCC will grant one of your top choices. Fortunately the process usually takes less than a month. (The ARRL VEC staff says that the FCC typically responds in about 18 days from the date of receipt; 10 of those days are to wait for your fee to arrive and clear.--Ed.)

I hope to hear you on the air soon with your "ideal" call sign.

Editor's note: Anthony Luscre, K8ZT, an ARRL member, lives in Stow, Ohio. He has worked in the field of medical microbiology for 18 years and is a technical consultant for a 6000-student school district. Luscre is an avid QRP operator having earned DXCC and WAC using no more that 5 W output. You can reach the author at his ARRL member’s Web address--K8ZT@ARRL.net

Previous: Surfin': QSL?

Next: ARRL Welcomes KH6HU as "Big Project" Coordinator