I went to the local AZDOT MVD office and ordered Ham Radio license plates for the RV, which was up for renewal in a few weeks. I killed two birds by ordering the plates and renewing the registration at the same time.
The image at the right is a mock-up of what the new plates might look like. I took a screenshot of the image on the DOT website and cobbled in the radio tower from another image. You can see what I did if you look closely.
Besides the call sign, there is a radio tower with lightning bolts coming out of it and the words “Amateur Radio Operator” instead of “Grand Canyon State” seen in my mock-up. In addition, there is a mountainscape and several saguaro cacti in silhouette along the bottom. The plates are colored in gradient from turquoise at the top, through white in the center and to gold on the bottom. I think they’re quite nice looking. An actual completed ham radio license plate can be seen here.
The agent who took my order said that the plates take four to six weeks to arrive. In the meantime, I’ll be impatiently waiting!
Nice plates! How much extra are they?
Ours are nothing fancy at all. Three small vertical letters on the left, “SCL” standing for “Special Call Letters”, just like “FLT” for fleet, and “FTK” for Farm Truck!
It’s $2/year, so at least it’s cheap.
If you want fancy plates you can pay more and get your SCL plates issued that way, but the really pretty plates cost $80~$100/year extra.
I’ll just get the plain, old, green-and-white Colorado ones, and pretend I’m driving a white Challenger!
DrJim,
The plate fee is $25 per year. A little expensive, but last year AZ Governor Ducey signed a bill which allowed the return of $17 of the fee on Amateur Radio license plates to the Amateur Radio community (ARCA), whoever that is.
My Arizona CAPNBOB plates are $50/year with some of it going to the Arizona Highways Magazine Fund. The ham plates are a bargain.
In the long run (which I did not mention in the post) I will revert to standard plates for the RV and keep the ham plates for a souvenir. One of them will join a bunch of other plates that Damsel and I already have hanging on the patio beam out back, including a K-Stan old yellow on blue AJ6F plate. I wish I had my old K-Stan black on yellow WA6HOD plates, but they are long gone.
Yeah, I wish I had the “ZARKOV” Illinois plates from my ’73 T/A.
I have all our old Kommiefornia plates on the wall in the garage. I think the Jeep plate is good for 2 more days!
Got rid of those suckers as fast as we could…..
As soon as we bought our property to build the house, we became eligible for AZ Drivers Licenses and Auto plates. We also established our PO Box at that time. We couldn’t wait to shed our association with CA and had our AZ stuff even before the house was built.
I just wish I had started the Ham Vanity Quest sooner. 🙂