[Elecraft] OT: US call areas

[Phil Kane]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:15:43 -0800, Robert Tellefsen wrote:

>Unfortunately, our FCC has gotten lazy, and now
>allows a ham to keep his call when he moves.

  Such calumny!  The real reason was that the Government
  Accounting Office, the bean-counters of the Feds, came in and
  made an audit of FCC license-issuing operations and decided
  that too much "resources" (i.e. money) was being spent on
  issuing and re-issuing both amateur and commercial operator
  licenses and in an effort to "nickle-nurse" the agency's
  operations, decreed that such things as lifetime commercial
  operator licenses and no-call-sign-change amateur licenses were
  to be the default.   I can't moan-and-groan about that because
  I got to ransom back my original "2-area" call sign first
  issued to me in 1952.

>FCC just doesn't seem to care.

  If they need to find you they can.

>Fortunately, the vast majority of calls are still
>in their original districts, so WAS is still not a
>big problem.

  If a ham really wants a "new" call representing the district
  in which s/he lives, the FCC can and will issue one in the
  "sequence"  i.e. no choice of prefix or suffix.
  Alternatively, any US ham can add the "/#" representing the
  call sign district id s/he wants.  Not required but not
  prohibited, either.  What is prohibited is adding a "/"
  followed by a combination of letters or numbers representing
  the prefix of a foreign country's ham licenses if the ham is in
  US territory.

--
   73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane
   Elecraft K2/100   s/n 5402