Callsigns

[W7NI at delphi.com]

There has been a lot of discussion about "last two letters" and 
whether the FCC thinks it is OK or not.  Observing how the FCC
regards callsigns on the 27MHz band, I have to believe they don;t
care what else you do to ID your station as long as you do the
minimum required in the rules which is at least every 10 minutes
and at the beginning and end of 3rd party traffic.  There are a couple
of other times you have to sign also, I think.

Anyway, on 27MHz there are no offical callsigns these days.  You can 
use just about anything you want including your ham call.  In fact, you
can use anybody's ham call you want.  I wonder how long it would take
to change that rule if N4RH started showing up a lot on 27 MHz?

In the 1960's, there was a local rock and roll AM station in Portland
with the call KISN.  There was some kind of trouble with the FCC and
they got thrown off the air.  They lost their call and it was then
issued to a station in Utah or somewhere.  Acouple of years ago, 
the original owners of KISN were allowed to go back on the air,
but they could not get their old call back.  Instead, they got KKSN.
Close, but not good enough.  All day long on both AM and FM, they
identify as KISM??  KISN and at the required times like on the hour
and on the half hour, they very quickly identify correctly as KKSN.
So, it seems, the FCC again does not care about how they identify
as long as they meet the minimum ID requirements.  All the rest of
the time they can identify any way they want, even using the letter
combination officially issued to another station.  I think the FCC
must see this situation as similar to some of the other FM stations
who use "nicknames such as k-105, or Q100, or whatever else they want to use.

The difference with amateur stations is that we are not assigned
to a single frequency like AM anbd FM braodcast stations so it is
not obvious who we are unles we identify.

Stan, W7NI at celphi.com