Are you legal?
The licence issued by “authorities” define your callsign - it’s always a good idea to read it!
1) If you are running low power you can’t sign AA1AA/QRP
2) If you are 14 years old you can’t sign AA1AA/14
3) If your reciprocal licence says to sign after your call you can’t use VP9/AA1AA
All this extra glorification/gratification adds to confusion, slows down pile-ups and isn’t LEGAL.
Note: This post was accidentally truncated by a weirdity between my Nokia Internet Tablet and Wordpress. I used the callsign above as a “generic” callsign and NOT to indicate rules that might apply specifically to licences issued by the FCC in the USA. I thought that was clear by the choice of “callsign”. Each administration has its own rules for licensing and my point was to check. This means that /M, /P, /MM, /MA and /AM may all be legitimate, but only under some administrations. The cases shown in points 1, 2 and 3 above are not. Take case 3. The licence issued by Bermuda clearly gives the indicated call to be used as AA1AA/VP9 and NOT VP9/AA1AA. This is true of many of the islands and I know that Grenada also issues licences as AA1AA/J3.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:56
[…] One of the Amateur Radio weblogs I read is Ars Telegraphia by Paul Evans, VP9KF. He recently made a post regarding the legality of identifiers after your call sign. The licence issued by “authorities” defined your callsign - read it! […]
December 13th, 2008 at 22:34
Part 97 is therefore confusing, because W4/VP9KF is REQUIRED and cannot be VP9KF/W4. Similarly, VE3XX/W4 is REQUIRED and cannot be W4/VE3XX. Allowing licencees to stick on bits willy-nilly seems just plain odd and isn’t legal elsewhere, but it seems like it is OK in the USA! I refer back to OK1RR, whose comment started me on this (http://ok1rr.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.57). Oh well, check your licence is the name of the game.