[South Florida DX Association] The History of Radio Amateur Call Signs: [Netherlands Antilles]

[Bill]

Jose PJ2MI sent this to me recently. It was part of his assistance to 
the local clubs to help sort out the PJ issues coming up. He wrote this 
on October 12,2010.

Jose was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands some years ago for his 
service to his country. His official Title is Sir Jose Cyntje. He was in 
charge of and issued licenses for PJ2, PJ4, and PJ7 for Netherlands 
Antilles for many years. Personally, Jose and I have been friends for 
over 25 years.

This only reflects his ideas and efforts to provide History in past decades.
Bill Marx W2CQ



The history of Radio Amateur call signs: [Netherlands Antilles]

This hobby was officially started in the Netherlands Antilles in 1952, 
after it had been in existence for many years in many other parts of the 
world.

At that time the government introduced the following system:

The country prefix followed by the first letter of the island’s name.

PJ2A for Aruba, PJ2B for Bonaire PJ2C for Curaçao etc.

Visitors to the islands where given PJ5..

In 1968, the deceased Mr. Carl Lingstuyl {LRD} and myself redesigned our 
call sign allocation system to give each island its own number. The 
system is presently still in use. This gave the authorities a way to 
know on what island people were operating from, especially the many 
tourist visitors with amateur licenses and the many contest operations.

When Aruba opted to leave the constellation of the Netherlands Antilles, 
our government in cooperation with the Netherlands reserved the P4 
prefix and Aruba entered the new era with its own prefix in 1986. The 
old PJ3.. call sign was shelved to prevent difficulties. We should take 
a similar decision with the PJ2.. callsigns.

Internationally each call sign is coded into a so-called “ADIF” coding 
system, see:

http://www.hosenose.com/adif/, this system gives unique number codes to 
countries.

Most, if not all radio amateurs hunt after and collect contacts with 
various entities and submit their data via the above system to 
International logging systems for awards [DXCC, VUCC etc] see: 
http://www.arrl.org/ .

Our local political changes are not reflected in our International radio 
amateur communications and Curaçao is still looked upon as “Netherlands 
Antilles” due to the number “2” after the prefix. The government has a 
choice of numbers like the “0”, “1” and ”9” to substitute the “2”. This 
will be a local administrative decision that will give our Pais Korsow 
its own face. I am not making this proposition for myself but for the 
International Radio Amateur community. This does not cost money but only 
a local split second decision. I understand that the VERONA has tried 
without success.

José M. Cijntje PJ2MI