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Ham Radio Corner
Welcome! Amateur radio is a great hobby for people interested in communications technology, technology experimentation, technology history, and emergency communications. For now, please visit the American Radio Relay League for more information on the hobby.
Call Signs
Please note that most
information in this section pertains to amateur radio call signs only.
So
what is this W2NAF thing, anyway?
That is my call sign, and it identifies me on the radio. It is internationally unique, so I am
the only ham radio operator in the world to hold this call sign. In the United States, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
assigns
call signs. There are two parts to
a call sign, the prefix and the suffix.
The prefix identifies the country, and the suffix consists of
letters
that make the call sign unique.
In
the United States, call sign prefixes can begin with the letter W, K,
N, or AA
– AK. The prefix almost always ends with a number.
The number in my call sign is a “2”. In
the United States, this number
represents the New York/New Jersey Region.
The
length and format of a call sign is also an important feature. Hams often look for certain features in
a call sign. Often, a ham radio
operator wants either a very short call sign or one with letters of
special
significance. Hams may also look
for calls that are easy to understand on phone (voice) modes, while
others look
for calls that work well in Morse Code.
Many hams do not look for any of these things.
The simply enjoy keeping their original call sign.
In
any case, call sign format for the United States is divided into four
groups. A table of the call sign
groups follows:
Group |
Format |
Example Call |
Minimum License Class |
|
A |
1 x 2 2 x 1 2 x 2 (With AA – AK Prefix) |
W1AW KA9P AA2AV |
Amateur Extra |
|
B |
2 x 2 |
KF2HC |
Advanced |
|
C |
1 x 3 |
W2NAF |
Technician |
|
D |
2 x 3 |
KC2KRQ |
Novice |
Special
1 x 1 call signs are also available as temporary special event call
signs. This call would look like K1K or
N2R. For more information, please
visit the ARRL’s
Special Event
Call Sign Page.
People
often ask me if you are allowed to choose your own call sign. Yes, Mrs. Singer, James was right. You can choose your own call sign. From first hand experience, I can even
tell you a little bit more about the process. First,
a new licensee will get a sequentially assigned call
sign from the FCC. At the
time of this writing, and probably for some time after it, a new radio
operators in the United States “2” region will receive a KC2xxx type
call sign. If you want to change it, you
can pay a
nominal fee and apply for a vanity call sign.
It is important that you remember that certain restrictions
apply to the new call sign you choose.
The call sign you are applying for must not be in use, must
follow the
standard prefix and suffix rules, and must not be geographically
restricted
(I.E. You cannot live in the continental U.S. and apply for a call sign
from
Hawaii or Alaska). Other, more
complicated rules also apply. If
you are a licensed ham, you can visit http://www.vanityhq.com
for more details.
HF Radio
I
am involved in the hobby in a variety of ways. I
contact other ham radio stations around the world using a
high frequency (HF) radio located in my house. These
contacts can be made using voice (also known as phone),
or Morse code (also known as CW).
It is also possible to send and receive pictures and data over
this
radio. The station I use is
similar to the one pictured in the QSL card above.
Contacts
on HF radios vary greatly in content.
Some contacts are as local as the next town over, while others
reach
halfway around the globe. Some
contacts are long and chatty, while others are astoundingly terse. One of my favorite activities is DXing,
or contacting foreign countries.
Most
of my contacts consist of stations located in Europe, Central America,
and the
United States. Some of my favorite
contacts include communications with Russia, Ukraine, South Africa,
Australia,
and Svalbard Island. Communications with entities such as
Svalbard Island are extremely desirable because of the desolate
climate,
obscure location, and the small number of people who live and operate
radios
from there. However, an entity can
become rare for other reasons. For
example, North Korea is currently the most coveted amateur radio
contact. This is because no one may
operate from
there due to political reasons.
After
a ham radio operator contacts a station in another country, he often
tries to
exchange a QSL card with the other station. These
cards are simply post cards that have the information
relating to the contact that was made over the radio.
The cards confirm that contact was established and are
needed to apply for various radio operating awards.
Ham radio operators also like to collect cards simply as
part of the hobby. Each operator’s
card tells something about him or her.
The front of my card is pictured above; it is a picture of my
radio
station through the summer of 2001.
By
now you may be thinking, what makes HF radio so special?
Can’t I use a telephone or the Internet
to contact these same people?
Well, perhaps this is where the joy of the hobby comes into play. Telephones and the Internet use third
party equipment such as wires, ISPs, and satellites to complete their
communications. HF ham radio does
not require any such equipment.
All you need is a radio on each side, power, and an antenna. God has taken care of the rest, for he
has created a layer of charged particles around the earth known as
ionosphere. Radio signals between
the ionosphere and the surface of the earth until the communication is
complete.
This graphic is from the
following ARRL article: http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/pdf/8312011.pdf
In
addition, ham radio is not a plug-and-play hobby. Certain
skills and knowledge are required to successfully
contact other stations, and this is especially true when trying to
contact
stations far away. All of this,
plus the thrill of talking to a far away land, creates the magic of HF
ham
radio.
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