In its petition, the Sundance Mountain Radio Association asserts that there is unnecessary and harmful confusion caused to daily amateur radio operation because the radio callsign is not a reliable indicator of station location. “It is common to work a W9 station and find out the guy actually moved to Florida years ago,” said Leroy Walker (KVØCO), President of the Sundance Mountain Radio Association (Palmer Lake, CO). “This wastes precious time when I am trying to work a particular state or area of the country. The other day, a KL7 station came booming in on 160m and I thought I had a new DXCC entity. Turns out, he was in Nebraska.”License Modification
Filed as #satire #humor #fakenews
Remember boys “Its April 1st”!
Since the demise of the Colorado-Texas Tomato War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado-Texas_Tomato_War) we need to do something to keep from being overrun by ham-migrants. All the hams are attracted by the natural HAAT aspect of the mountains for antenna sites.
I am working on an add-on for Colorado repeaters that would recognize the region of the call sign and teleport the operator back to wherever they came from as soon as they keyed up if they have been in the state for more than a month. We like people to visit and spend money and then go back home.
The most difficult problem I have is getting them back to the right state. Texans don’t like being transported back to Oklahoma and vice-versa. And I am having trouble with W5 stations…I kinda like the hams from New Mexico, they usually bring chile with them.
How about all the hams who have acquired their relatives, Dad, Grandfathers etc. call sign legally to keep their memory alive, but don’t currently live in the original region.
I wouldn’t be a ham if I couldn’t have done this!
The whole country shouldn’t have to do this just to appease one little radio club. Personally, I like things the way they are and don’t like having to change or modify a call sign that has been used for years. Deal with it, like the rest of us do. It is not a problem. Unless, of course, you are a member of said radio club…..
I was getting a bit worked up about this article, until I made it to the end of it. You had me for a while!
While this is a April Fools Day post, the angst around this topic is real. I am a ‘6’ callsign living in ‘9’ land, and still have people ask me why I don’t change my call.
The ubiquity of logging programs that do automatic callsign lookup should render this complaint null, but still the topic is still debated.
Thanks for the comment, John.
I do kind of wish we could rely on the callsign as an indicator of location but that ship has sailed due to decisions made by the FCC. The most confusing/annoying case is when someone is operating outside their DXCC entity (KH6, KL7, …).