[Lowfer] LowFER IDs ?

[John Davis]

>
>Peter, LWCA member who now knows what LowF*E*R stands for--see Jon's
>site


Ummm...Jon's site is certainly worth reading, but perhaps you missed the
definition of LowFER on the LWCA site?  The LowFER/MedFER "About Part 15"
page (the old "What Is It?" page from the earliest days of our presence on
the Web, going on seven years now; still with the filename whatisit.htm, in
fact) has always started off with the first sentence in the first paragraph
of the first topic:  "Well, LowFER stands for Low Frequency Experimental
Radio, and MedFER stands for Medium Frequency Experimental Radio...."

In recent years, we added the term HiFER to the sentence, of course, and I'm
seriously considering adding "WhatevFER" to cover any other Part 15 activity
that comes down the pike in the future.  :-)

Now, as for calls...the FCC issued guidelines on this subject many years ago
that basically state anything goes, PROVIDED that a reasonable person would
not misassociate the Part 15 station with an existing or authorized station
in a licensed service.  Some examples were even given at one time, as I
recall, to the effect that if you were operating an AM or FM wireless mic,
you shouldn't identify with the call sign of any real broadcaster.  So, you
would look in White's Radio Log (back in the olden days) to see if your
preferred callsign was shown as in use by a broadcaster or not.

Reason would tell us that if you were operating near the edge of the
aerobeacon band, you wouldn't want to use the identifier of an NDB that
operates in your area.  That could conceivably mislead a pilot if he were
careless in tuning a beacon receiver.  Granted, it would take a LOT of "ifs"
these days for that to pose a real problem...if you were a pilot who still
uses NDBs, if there were a real one of sufficient signal strength and the
same ident in the area where you were flying,  if you had a really primitive
receiver so that the mistuning wasn't pretty obvious, if the Part 15 beacon
were identifying at a speed similar to an NDB, etc. etc.  But using a
callsign that's the same as the identifier of an NDB hundreds or thousands
of miles away is obviously not going to pose a problem of misidentification.

In practice, most Part 15-ers who are also licensed amateurs simply use the
letters of their ham call.  One or two have even used their full ham
callsign, which in the broadest interpretation of the guideline is legit
UNTIL such time as we have an LF amateur allocation.  But most of us want to
avoid even the remote possibility of the FCC thinking our ham rigs are
producing out-of-band spurs, so we don't use the full call.  And there are a
couple of folks who don't want their ham calls associated with their LF or
other Part 15 activity in any way.

So basically, feel free.  Simply make sure you're not likely to confuse
anyone with your chosen call first, and you should be OK

73,
John