[DX] Japanese Prefixes

[W6Si]

JA's (actually Japanese has JA through JS, then 7J-N, 8J-N) do not
distinguish their callsigns per license class. As far as I know, class
callsigh is a US-unique method.
The difference in prefix only signify the time they are originally licensed.
They started with JA (two letters suffix), JA (three letters suffix), JH,
JR, JE, JF, JG .... then when they finally ran out of J prefixes, they went
to 7J and 7K, L, M, N's. Except for JA, all callsigns are of three letter
suffix. 7J, I believe, is assigned to foreginers operating in Japan.
A few years back, they decided to reassign JE and later callsigns to orignal
owners who applied to reinstate their station license (yours truly is a
beneficiary of that). But other than that, they never recirculated the old
callsigns. No vanity callsign there (another US-unique system). I don't know
what they'll do once they run out of 7N's. But then, the declining ham
population is a problem there, also.

Tak Asami
W6Si / JE1VMO


-----Original Message-----
From: dx-admin@mailman.qth.net [mailto:dx-admin@mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of
John Geiger
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 7:20 PM
To: dx@mailman.qth.net; dx-list@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [DX] Japanese Prefixes


I am wondering if Japan assigns different prefixes to
different classes of licenses-for example, is there a
license difference between a JA call, a JR call, and a
JG call?  Also, is there a difference between J##
calls and the 7L, 7M, and 7N calls that are now
appearing?