Leisure
What use is an F-call? Recently I witnessed a discussion about callsigns. As you know, your amateur callsign is akin to your personal on-air identity. It's the thing that distinguishes your station from all the other stations on the globe. My callsign was assigned to me randomly, it was intended as a temporary stepping stone to a higher license, but over time I was distracted by all the things I could do as a Foundation Class amateur and my callsign now feels like "me". The discussion was about the re-issuing of callsigns. In Australia, if you don't renew your callsign, after a period of time, it becomes available to be re-issued to another amateur. This allows people to obtain that one particular call that they feel represents them. Some amateurs have the same callsign for many years. It's their identity, it's the thing they used in contests, camp-outs, chats and the rest of their amateur life. When an active, well respected amateur relinquishes their call, often when they become a silent key, there are amateurs who feel that this call should not be re-issued. The practice is different across the globe. In some countries, a callsign is for life, though it's unclear what happens when an amateur becomes silent. Likely there are places where the call becomes available, and in other places it doesn't. In Australia we have calls that come with two letters, VK6YS, Wally, or VK6AS, Andrew are examples of that. In total there are 26 times 26 different options, that is, 676 different two letter callsigns per call area. If we were to lock up each deserving two-letter callsign, we'd run out of two letter calls. While we're chopping down this idea, how would we decide who is deserving and what criteria would we use? If we ever get a single letter callsign, there would be 26 different callsigns. We'd run out even faster. There was much written about retaining and protecting two letter callsigns, but I'm sure I've shown that this is not a sustainable idea. I've seen, heard and read much about amateur radio since I joined the community. There is much rubbish among the gems. Retaining two-letter callsigns for ever is an example of rubbish. I wish those amateurs who want to protect their hobby went back to inventing, back to innovating, back to trying, testing, playing and having fun, rather than attempting to retain the racist, sexist, 1950's that they seem to think represents the pinnacle of Amateur Radio. And if you want to honour a callsign for a mate, then record their history, tell their stories, share their exploits, emulate their kindness and encouragement. I'm Onno VK6FLAB