ORIGINS

This project got its start back in 2021, the day I applied for my first short vanity call-sign and lost. The AE7Q site was a fine help, but my understanding of how the FCC went about its business was thin, and it seemed to me the world could use a prediction model that kept up with the clock instead of the calendar. Having lately retired from professional life, and having loved Amateur Radio for the better part of mine, I put my systems experience to work on the problem. Figured anyone that could pair three mares and a stallion together in a team and train 'em to drive a straight line on a washed-out gravel road should be able to think through this with a little horse sense and backwoods logic. The BETA prediction framework I threw together back then has been whittled on and sanded ever since. What you see today is the product of a dull knife, worn-out sandpaper, and a lot of elbow grease. It got me my first short call, W5ZQ, in September 2026... well, that, and there was only one other operator bidding for the privilege. Then I thought to myself, a thing that works that good ought not be kept to one's self; it should be turned into a slot machine... well, or shared with my fellow Hams chasing a short call, or any vanity call for that matter.

My great appreciation to the Ham community for its advice and willingness to lend a hand. It astonished me that other Hams were as sharp as they are, and I told that to my XYL. She looked me straight in the eye and said, "You should get out more!" She's probably right on that. Maybe in my old age my pencil isn't as sharp as it once was. Anyways, you OMs, XYLs and even YLs, yeah I know a few, thank you from the bottom of my heart... but wouldn't it be fun to have a clever slot machine. hi hi, wink wink.

Along the way I've added a few other features that have been valuable tools to Ham operators over the years, and I figured a call-sign prediction/slot machine ought to have a historical call-sign lookup to complement itself, and son, let me tell you, that joker has turned into quite an effort; something close to genealogy research, or trying to mend warped fence posts. Who snatched what call-sign one day after it expired because you forgot to send in your application, and who begat call-sign from father to son, bridging generations. After a great many hours squinting at old scans, made with every clever device of man, wearing out two sets of good bifocal reading spectacles, I decided to build my own using modern processes and data scrubbing, mainly a number 2 pencil, a school-boy eraser, and a huge abacus. You should see that thang. The result has been plain astonishing. Perfect? Maybe as perfect as an upstream Mississippi riverboat ride after a gully-washer the night before, but it is still mighty impressive for the pile of horse manure we had to sort through, if I do say so myself.

CALL-SIGN HISTORY

Now pull up a chair, because none of what follows makes a lick of sense without a little call-sign history. Before 1912, in what I'll call the Self-Assigned Era, a radio hobbyist just made up their own call-sign, generally their initials, or two or three letters he was fond of, or whatever he could key before their better-half called them to supper...(If I were alive then, I always thought BS for Buck Snort would have been great) Then the Titanic went down, and Washington got religion in a hurry, as it does when the newspapers are watching.

Then, as Congress does, they produced and passed the Radio Act of 1912, becoming the second domestic wireless regulation this country ever had, after the Wireless Ship Act of 1910; requiring radios on large passenger ships. It handed the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Navigation to be exact, the chore of issuing radio licenses, and by 1913 the Department had itself a proper call-sign policy, which is to say a policy for telling a person what to call themselves, and stocking plenty of pencils and erasers. They carved the country into nine (9) radio inspection districts, and a call-sign became a district number and two letters, and later three: 1AW, 5ZQ or 2AHO. (You can hunt those up on the W5ZQ lookup page by their three (3) characters, or as W1AW, W5ZQ or W2AHO; either road gets you there, and neither one has a toll.)

To keep amateurs from underfoot of the military and the shipping lines, the Department penned them up in "shortwave", 200 meters and down, which is to say everything above 1500 kHz. The learned men of the day were satisfied those short wavelengths were good for nothing but static, and they gave them to the amateurs the way you'd give a boy the back forty full of rocks that won't grow corn. With a measure of horse sense, that boy found gold in it. With a back-handed slap that was 1,500 kHz and above, the government unwittingly handed amateurs of the day the keys to the whole HF spectrum, and Hams did the rest, discovered how to skip off the ionosphere, and were talking to Australians before the experts had finished explaining why it couldn't be done. Remember that horse sense and elbow grease comment.

Then, along came the "Chaos of 1926." Commercial broadcasters, flush and multiplying like rabbits, broke the system clean in two. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, yeah that Hoover, President Hoover. Not to be confused with J. Edgar Hoover, who became the first head of the FBI, which has jack and molasses to do with our conversation. Anyways, President Hoover, who wasn't actually President yet, tried to keep a firm hand on the frequencies, but them flint-hearted, letter-of-the-law, black-robed mules in the federal courts told him, more than once, that the 1912 law gave him no power to deny a license or assign a wavelength, which is a hard thing for a man of his stature to hear, and a harder thing for him to admit. Control collapsed, and for a spell the airwaves were about as orderly as a hog auction with the gate left open. Kind of like the CB of today... hihi.

Here goes Congress again. They passed the Radio Act of 1927 and answered that by setting up the Federal Radio Commission, the FRC, and taking the regulating away from the Department of Commerce, which by then was glad to be shed of it. Under the international allocations agreed in Washington that same year, U.S. amateurs got the W and K prefixes, 'she got the gold-mine and I got the shaft' came to mind, thank you Jerry Reed....anyways, W and K prefixes applied from October 1928, which was handy, as the old combinations were about used up and the alternative was branding Hams like cattle. The FRC was told to clean up the airwaves, and it laid down the rule that a station must operate in the "public interest, convenience, or necessity", a standard amateur radio is still held to this day. When weather turns mean, Hams are the last ones still talking. The Commission was meant to last just one year, just long enough to fix the interference mess. You already know how that went. They stepped right in the middle of a warm cow-patty. Nothing in Washington is so permanent as a temporary commission, or cow manure on your new cleated boots. Smooth Ropers always cleaned up better.

What all that means to you and me is the birth of our "W", "N", and "K" prefixes. The Navy took "N", the military always goes first, as it should, and Hams on the continent got "W", and "K" was held back strictly for the overseas territories and possessions (K7 for Alaska, K6 for Hawaii), so the old district call-signs became W1AW, W5ZQ, and so on down the line. In our lookup, from 1928 forward, 1AW is shown as W1AW, as the new rules took hold, and if you look them up by either call, they'll answer.

The FRC cleaned up the spectrum well enough, but its say-so stopped at the antenna. Wire communications, the telephones and telegraphs, were still looked after by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the ICC, which meant a man's voice was regulated by one agency on the way to the microphone and by another after he keyed up. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted one outfit over the whole of electronic communication, and so Congress jumps in again, and the Communications Act of 1934 was born. The Federal Communications Commission, our beloved FCC, was created by that Act and it has been looking after us ever since, in the manner of a Sunday-school teacher who means well and keeps a ruler handy. They really have been pretty good to us, and with the help of the ARRL, known as the American Radio Relay League, it's been quite the partnership.

Late in the 1940s, after the second big war, amateur radio took off like a scalded cat. The "W" combinations ran dry in the crowded call areas, so the FCC commenced issuing "K" prefixes to operators on the continent, in a few regions at first, then nationwide by the early 1950s. (California, for one got Hawaii's K6, while Hawaii got the KH6, which is the closest most Californians have come to living in Hawaii, but I've heard SoCal is not so bad.)

When the "K" combinations gave out in the decades that followed, the FCC brought in the "WA/WB/WD", and "KA/KB/KC" prefixes, and in the 1970s took to sharing the Navy's "N" to boot; they had more letters than ships by then. The Navy's own continued use of "N" call-signs, which extended to the Navy MARS program, and the "AA–AL" prefix blocks was opened to Amateur Extra and Advanced operators to ease the squeeze, if you will.

Interesting stuff really, and worth knowing for any Amateur Radio operator who'd like to know where their call came from before somebody at a hamfest asks.

I hope you enjoyed our little history lesson. There won't be a test, I promise, but there is a lookup page. wink

Happy hunting, and I hope to hear you on the air.

73 de Sr., W5ZQ