Notions

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!

For whatever reason, a large number of desirable amateur radio callsigns will become available tomorrow, November 5, 2018. The callsigns available are shown in the screenshot from the RadioQTH website. I have only shown the 1×2 and 2×1 calls designated for the amateur extra class licensees. There are 164 1×2 and 24 2×1 calls becoming available.

Since I am only interested in 1×2 calls with the numeral 7 in them, I will only apply for those tomorrow. The FCC vanity application allows for a list of up to 25 callsigns in order of preference. I have already made up a spreadsheet for the calls I intend to select. The order I chose was based on three criteria: 1) CW weight, or the length of time it takes to send the call using Morse code, 2) Phonetic weight, or the number of syllables to articulate the callsign in voice modes using the international phonetic alphabet and 3) my own parochially assigned likeability for a callsign.

Fortunately, there are enough 1×2 calls in the seventh callsign area to allow me to completely fill in the 25 available slots in the FCC application. For most of the calls available, there will be a tremendous amount of competition. Wish me luck.

11/05/2018 UPDATE: Here’s my list. Click on the image to enlarge.

Image: Amateur Radio Callsign Regions – Click to enlarge.

Since we have escaped from California and now live in the 7th call area (the free state of Arizona), I am trying to dump the 2×1 6th area (California) callsign in favor of a K/N/W7x2 vanity call. As of today, I’m 0 for 19 tries with one vanity application still pending. I am hoping to have a new 7th area callsign by the end of 2018.

This post is actually a continuation of a series started on the Minstrel a while back. Those posts are currently inaccessible via HTTP but somewhat accessible to me via FTP. More on that as things progress.

The process of getting a Vanity Callsign is fairly simple. You apply for an account sign-in on the FCC ULS (Universal Licensing System) and apply for your vanity callsign there. A couple of sources to see what calls are available are Radio QTH Vanity Calls and AE7Q Query Tools. Either of these sites provide which calls are available and much more.

The competition is quite intense when applying for these popular callsigns, hence the lack of success as mentioned in the first paragraph. I have seen the odds vary from 68:1 down to 4:1 over the nineteen unsuccessful tries. The probability for success of my current application for W7EC is 5.56% with seventeen other competitors. All applications received for a given vanity call are electronically tossed into a hat and a random winner selected.

I will post updates to this effort as time progresses. Wish me luck.