When my boss built his first radio station he told the FCC that the station was NORTH of the Mississippi. They let him pick W or K.
-de John NI0K > On Oct 6, 2020, at 4:29 PM, Phil Kane <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> On 10/6/2020 1:04 PM, Mike Morrow wrote: >> >> Another interesting fact about US broadcast station callsigns is that >> back before U.S. maritime radioTELEGRAPHY ended (except for rare >> historical exercises) in 1999, most US-flag merchant ships with >> radiotelegraph stations were assigned four-letter callsigns beginning >> with K or W. > > As others have posted, the convention was that Broadcast stations east > of the Mississippi were given W call letters and west of the Mississippi > were given K call letters (with noted exceptions). Ocean-going ships > had the opposite according to their home port of registration. > >> There are no longer many such calls that are still assigned to >> merchant shipping. > > When I started doing ship safety radio inspections in 1967 there were > 600+ such vessels in the US registry, not counting the WW-II-era Victory > ships that were owned by the U S Maritime Commission and were being > pulled out of "Red Lead Row" (deep storage Reserve Fleets) and operated > under contract to support the Vietnam War going on at that time. New > ship radiotelegraph stations will be licensed as part of the ship's > radio station license under the now-standard XXXnnnn call letters. > > 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane > Elecraft K2/100 s/n 5402 > > From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest > Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to [email protected] ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
