You seem shorter than I remember…

November 25, 2008 | Amateur Radio | By: Mark VandeWettering

When you get an amateur radio license, you are issued a callsign. Mine was KF6KYI. This was a “2×3” call, which means it had two digits, followed by a single region digit, followed by three letters. These are issued sequentially, which means they aren’t particularly aesthetic or short. If you want to spend a grand $14, you can request a different (usually shorter, but sometimes with just some special meaning to you) callsign by the “vanity callsign program”. The shortest “1×2” calls are fairly rare, so they actually have a kind of lottery system to reassign ones that have expired.

Net result: I am KF6KYI no longer.

I am now:

K6HX

Comments

Comment from Ben, N1WBV
Time 11/25/2008 at 6:36 pm

Bah, you youngins’ getting vanity calls! A disgrace to the hobby! 🙂

Congrats on the new call. Now I’m going to have to remember it.

Comment from Ben Pharr, WF5N
Time 11/25/2008 at 10:18 pm

Congrats on the new call. A shorter call was one of the main reasons I upgraded to Extra. I went from KE5RDQ to WF5N.

Editor’s note: Thanks Ben, but it’s not like it really took any effort. 🙂 I just applied for a bunch of short calls, and this is the one that landed. Now I need to get used to calling Kilowatt Six Hotel X-Ray.

Comment from Jeff, KE9V
Time 11/26/2008 at 11:43 am

Congrats on the new call Mark, it’s a good one!

73 de Jeff

Comment from Bryan, N6LY
Time 12/5/2008 at 5:42 pm

Congrats Mark! When I changed from KI6AZD to N6LY I was so happy! Only something fellow HAMs can appreciate I’m sure.