Amateur Radio call sign history
Begin nerdy topic, skip if uninterested. :D
While my bread dough is rising this morning, I took time to pursue a little research I have been meaning to do for quite a while. I wanted to know who, if anyone, had held my ham radio call sign before I grabbed it in 2012.
A little history for that: I first became interested in amateur radio at about age 12, introduced by my Uncle Wes whose station was K8HFM. Getting an actual license was intimidating, though. You had to pass a test to prove you could understand Morse code at least at a slow speed, plus answer a bunch of technical and regulatory questions. Even the easiest beginner license, the Novice level at that time, put me off for years. It wasn't until 1983 (at the advanced age of 33) that I finally made an appointment and took the test. It wasn't really all that difficult, and I passed. When my license arrived in the mail several weeks later, I had been assigned the station call KA9NZI. In the interim, I had actually built a small transceiver from a HeathKit prepackaged set of parts, and I quickly strung up a kinky wire antenna from the picture moldings in my Chicago apartment. Miraculously, it all worked and I managed enough shaky Morse to make an actual contact.
I'll spare you the years of history that followed, other than to say I got better at Morse, and studied enough to pass the next exam level for a General class license in about 1986 or thereabouts. There was a time (back in the 1950s and 60s) when Novice class licenses were assigned call letters beginning with "WN" and when upgrading to General, they were allowed to drop out the "N" but by the 80s, that was no longer in effect. First time licensees received WA call signs then for General class, or KA call signs for Novice. The Technician class (with access only to VHF or higher frequencies) was in the middle there and I'm not sure what they were getting in the 80s. Anyway, if you had started as a Novice with a KA sign, you could just keep it and use it with the additional privileges of the General class; or you could let the FCC give you a completely unrelated WA (or WB after they ran out of WA call signs.) This created some chaos and occasional accusations on the air from old timers with 5 character W or K call signs, who seemed to think if you used a KA call you should not be on the General class frequency bands. Some were even suspicious of WA or WB call signs, and I remember hearing one codger refer to "WB" as meaning "Wet Bottom." This eventually helped to prompt the FCC to change its rules again in several respects.
The end result was both a lot of confusion and a complete breakdown of the class distinctions once made by call sign prefix. The prefix N came into use around then. The AA through AL prefixes, which along with N had been "owned" by the US but not used, also appeared on the air, usually held by Advanced class licensees. Then the exam and privilege structures were revised, and the Novice and Advanced licenses were dropped. Those who held them could still use them within the privileges originally granted, but no new exams or licenses for those levels were issued. The original call signs in the forms W#xxx or K#xxx had almost all been used up by then. While it was once FCC practice to reassign calls after the associated license expired or was surrendered, the record keeping was considered too costly and that practice was dropped.
Another result was that all new call signs were six characters long, Wx#xxx or Kx#xxx. This was pretty unpopular because the longer call sign increases the likelihood of an error in transcribing Morse code, and takes longer to send. (Only a fraction of a second more, but still this was made a big issue.) Ultimately, the FCC was convinced to allow any ham holding a General class license or higher to request any valid call sign that was not currently in use. The cost of record keeping was reimbursed as an administrative fee paid by the applicant.
All this leads up to my indecisiveness that lasted 20 years, over whether I should drop the "A" out of my own call to make it K9NZI. I was pretty sure I had once checked and found that W9NZI and K9NZI were already assigned and active anyway. It wasn't until I was renewing my automobile license plate in 2012 that I committed to changing calls, since I had the call sign on my plates as well. Wonder of wonders, K9NZI was available then and I applied for it. You could list more than one choice in order of preference, in case someone beat you to the first selection, so I added my Uncle Wes' former call K8HFM as a second choice since he was by then a "silent key" as hams refer to those who are deceased. I received K9NZI and changed my license plates to match.
For another decade, I occasionally wondered who had previously been K9NZI and what happened to them. Today I finally found a relatively easy way to research that, thanks to the Internet Archive. Some of you know of the "Wayback Machine," which archives extinct web site contents, but that is just part of the many historical functions the Internet Archive provides. And one of their services has put amateur radio call sign directories on line in a readable and viewable format. The indexing is all but non-existent, but at least you can choose a year and a call sign district, of which the US has ten, and scroll through a PDF of those call sign listings if the year is available. Every single year is not there, but most of the gaps are earlier than about 1950. So I started browsing.
W9NZI was held by the same fellow from some time in the 1950s at least until near the end of the century. He originally lived in the Chicago area but moved around quite a bit and in the end was in Dunedin, Florida (presumably retired then.) But to my surprise, I could find no trace of K9NZI until it was attached to my name in 2012. Poking around in the books from the 50s up through the 90s made it clear that call signs after K9Mxx were not ever assigned by the FCC to new licensees. Just when they would have reached that point was when they changed to start giving out WA9xxx calls instead. So apparently, in the century and more of amateur radio history in the US, I have held not just one, but two unique call signs. I think I'll keep K9NZI, thanks.
I tried once to upgrade to the top level Extra class license, but missed the required number of correct answers on the rather obtuse and extensive examination by one question and I haven't tried again. The extra privileges earned by Extra class licensing are pretty limited and just as exotic as the exam questions are. One of those is the privilege of requesting a four character call sign, but obviously the number of four character combinations, the second or third of which must be a numeral and the other three alphabetic, is pretty small. The competition is fierce when one of those becomes available for reassignment.
All this is kind of silly anyway. But I found it amusing looking through those old directories to find out who else held call signs ending in "9NZI" over the years. I've always been weird, and there's one more way in which I am unique.
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While my bread dough is rising this morning, I took time to pursue a little research I have been meaning to do for quite a while. I wanted to know who, if anyone, had held my ham radio call sign before I grabbed it in 2012.
A little history for that: I first became interested in amateur radio at about age 12, introduced by my Uncle Wes whose station was K8HFM. Getting an actual license was intimidating, though. You had to pass a test to prove you could understand Morse code at least at a slow speed, plus answer a bunch of technical and regulatory questions. Even the easiest beginner license, the Novice level at that time, put me off for years. It wasn't until 1983 (at the advanced age of 33) that I finally made an appointment and took the test. It wasn't really all that difficult, and I passed. When my license arrived in the mail several weeks later, I had been assigned the station call KA9NZI. In the interim, I had actually built a small transceiver from a HeathKit prepackaged set of parts, and I quickly strung up a kinky wire antenna from the picture moldings in my Chicago apartment. Miraculously, it all worked and I managed enough shaky Morse to make an actual contact.
I'll spare you the years of history that followed, other than to say I got better at Morse, and studied enough to pass the next exam level for a General class license in about 1986 or thereabouts. There was a time (back in the 1950s and 60s) when Novice class licenses were assigned call letters beginning with "WN" and when upgrading to General, they were allowed to drop out the "N" but by the 80s, that was no longer in effect. First time licensees received WA call signs then for General class, or KA call signs for Novice. The Technician class (with access only to VHF or higher frequencies) was in the middle there and I'm not sure what they were getting in the 80s. Anyway, if you had started as a Novice with a KA sign, you could just keep it and use it with the additional privileges of the General class; or you could let the FCC give you a completely unrelated WA (or WB after they ran out of WA call signs.) This created some chaos and occasional accusations on the air from old timers with 5 character W or K call signs, who seemed to think if you used a KA call you should not be on the General class frequency bands. Some were even suspicious of WA or WB call signs, and I remember hearing one codger refer to "WB" as meaning "Wet Bottom." This eventually helped to prompt the FCC to change its rules again in several respects.
The end result was both a lot of confusion and a complete breakdown of the class distinctions once made by call sign prefix. The prefix N came into use around then. The AA through AL prefixes, which along with N had been "owned" by the US but not used, also appeared on the air, usually held by Advanced class licensees. Then the exam and privilege structures were revised, and the Novice and Advanced licenses were dropped. Those who held them could still use them within the privileges originally granted, but no new exams or licenses for those levels were issued. The original call signs in the forms W#xxx or K#xxx had almost all been used up by then. While it was once FCC practice to reassign calls after the associated license expired or was surrendered, the record keeping was considered too costly and that practice was dropped.
Another result was that all new call signs were six characters long, Wx#xxx or Kx#xxx. This was pretty unpopular because the longer call sign increases the likelihood of an error in transcribing Morse code, and takes longer to send. (Only a fraction of a second more, but still this was made a big issue.) Ultimately, the FCC was convinced to allow any ham holding a General class license or higher to request any valid call sign that was not currently in use. The cost of record keeping was reimbursed as an administrative fee paid by the applicant.
All this leads up to my indecisiveness that lasted 20 years, over whether I should drop the "A" out of my own call to make it K9NZI. I was pretty sure I had once checked and found that W9NZI and K9NZI were already assigned and active anyway. It wasn't until I was renewing my automobile license plate in 2012 that I committed to changing calls, since I had the call sign on my plates as well. Wonder of wonders, K9NZI was available then and I applied for it. You could list more than one choice in order of preference, in case someone beat you to the first selection, so I added my Uncle Wes' former call K8HFM as a second choice since he was by then a "silent key" as hams refer to those who are deceased. I received K9NZI and changed my license plates to match.
For another decade, I occasionally wondered who had previously been K9NZI and what happened to them. Today I finally found a relatively easy way to research that, thanks to the Internet Archive. Some of you know of the "Wayback Machine," which archives extinct web site contents, but that is just part of the many historical functions the Internet Archive provides. And one of their services has put amateur radio call sign directories on line in a readable and viewable format. The indexing is all but non-existent, but at least you can choose a year and a call sign district, of which the US has ten, and scroll through a PDF of those call sign listings if the year is available. Every single year is not there, but most of the gaps are earlier than about 1950. So I started browsing.
W9NZI was held by the same fellow from some time in the 1950s at least until near the end of the century. He originally lived in the Chicago area but moved around quite a bit and in the end was in Dunedin, Florida (presumably retired then.) But to my surprise, I could find no trace of K9NZI until it was attached to my name in 2012. Poking around in the books from the 50s up through the 90s made it clear that call signs after K9Mxx were not ever assigned by the FCC to new licensees. Just when they would have reached that point was when they changed to start giving out WA9xxx calls instead. So apparently, in the century and more of amateur radio history in the US, I have held not just one, but two unique call signs. I think I'll keep K9NZI, thanks.
I tried once to upgrade to the top level Extra class license, but missed the required number of correct answers on the rather obtuse and extensive examination by one question and I haven't tried again. The extra privileges earned by Extra class licensing are pretty limited and just as exotic as the exam questions are. One of those is the privilege of requesting a four character call sign, but obviously the number of four character combinations, the second or third of which must be a numeral and the other three alphabetic, is pretty small. The competition is fierce when one of those becomes available for reassignment.
All this is kind of silly anyway. But I found it amusing looking through those old directories to find out who else held call signs ending in "9NZI" over the years. I've always been weird, and there's one more way in which I am unique.
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