Wednesday, May 27, 2020

K1LH - New Vanity Callsign

Since I was licensed while living in Alaska, I was issued a sequential callsign - KL3NO.

Nothing wrong with that, but I found the callsign was often miss-heard the first time, sometimes people got excited for a moment thinking they had snagged a contact in Alaska, and having a KL callsign (AL/KL/NL/WL are reserved for Alaska) feels out of place in the lower 48.

Occasionally I'd look at the upcoming availability of vanity call signs, and maybe get something better. Ideally I wanted a K7 callsign being in the seven call district, however the seven district is large and the competition is high for good 1x2 callsigns when they become available.

I happened to notice that K1LH was coming up, LH = my initials, initials are a common choice for many. K1 is kinda cool because well, the number one.

Waited for it to become available, and on the day filed the application. Amazingly no one else applied for it on the same day. Once someone applies for an available callsign, anyone else who wants a chance at getting it must also apply on the same day. After a waiting period of 18 days a random selection is made.