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K, W, X, C starting call letters

K6JHU said:
Call signs starting with numbers (except for 1) have been assigned by treaty. The list of countries using number prefixes is on-line.
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No callsigns beginning with the numerals 0 (0AA-0ZZ) or 1 (1AA-1ZZ) have been officially assigned by the ITU, although there are some unofficial/pirate calls out there. They say that it avoids confusion with the letters O and I, respectively. Not a chance in reality. Not only are the International Morse Code characters vastly different, but so are the ASCII characters. There is no confusion on-air.

Besides, if they wanted to avoid sloppy-handwriting confusion (which is really the only way they could be confused), why have both 5 and S, or 6 and G? Or even 2 and Z? The ITU is in no danger of running out of prefix blocks yet, but they might in the future. No reason why they couldn't assign prefixes beginning with 0 or 1 if they have to.
 
KeithE4 said:
No callsigns beginning with the numerals 0 (0AA-0ZZ) or 1 (1AA-1ZZ) have been officially assigned by the ITU, although there are some unofficial/pirate calls out there. They say that it avoids confusion with the letters O and I, respectively. Not a chance in reality. Not only are the International Morse Code characters vastly different, but so are the ASCII characters. There is no confusion on-air.

Besides, if they wanted to avoid sloppy-handwriting confusion (which is really the only way they could be confused), why have both 5 and S, or 6 and G? Or even 2 and Z? The ITU is in no danger of running out of prefix blocks yet, but they might in the future. No reason why they couldn't assign prefixes beginning with 0 or 1 if they have to.
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Here in Vermont, license plates, issued sequentially in the ABC-123 format, cannot start with letters I or O, which makes sense, but J is also forbidden, I guess because it's also too similar to a zero. The plates go right from HZZ to KAA. We'll have to wait a few years to see what happens with Q, as this tiny state has yet to even get all the way through the KAA-KZZ series.
 
gr8oldies said:
1932 or 33, at any rate, way back. The English service had a very American (as in U.S.) sound.
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I had a lot of contact with HCJB while I was in Ecuador and most of the English speaking staff was from "Middle America". Several of their top engineers helped me build my first FM transmitters, and for a while I "co-anchored" their DX program just for fun.

The HCJB complex near the old airport in Quito consisted, at the time, of about a dozen buildings including many studios, a huge engineering department and even a school and residence are for the "imported" staff.
 
DavidEduardo said:
I had a lot of contact with HCJB while I was in Ecuador and most of the English speaking staff was from "Middle America". Several of their top engineers helped me build my first FM transmitters, and for a while I "co-anchored" their DX program just for fun.

The HCJB complex near the old airport in Quito consisted, at the time, of about a dozen buildings including many studios, a huge engineering department and even a school and residence are for the "imported" staff.
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What I seem to remember was most of the staff were on missionary duty and had to raise their own support. I do remember hearing an Australian couple. HCJB did give me some exposure to "Jesus Rock" (which later became Contemporary Christian). They ran a half hour every night.
 
KeithE4 said:
Besides, if they wanted to avoid sloppy-handwriting confusion (which is really the only way they could be confused), why have both 5 and S, or 6 and G? Or even 2 and Z? The ITU is in no danger of running out of prefix blocks yet, but they might in the future. No reason why they couldn't assign prefixes beginning with 0 or 1 if they have to.
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For the record, the 2Z block is assigned to the UK (along with the rest of the 2-block), the 5S block is assigned to Madagascar (along with 5R), and 6G is assigned to Mexico as part of 6D-6J.

There are no O2-O9 assignments, and I0-I9 are assigned to Italy since they own the entire I-block. The ITU doesn't list any letter/number combinations for blocks that are assigned completely to one country (2, B, F, G, I, K, M, N, R, and W), but by definition, they are there.
 
KeithE4 said:
N was originally assigned exclusively to the Navy and Marines, while AA-AL were split between the Army and Air Force. They were released for Amateur Radio use in 1978.
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Think one of my uncles mentioned that, but was long ago and getting old sucks!
 
CTListener said:
Here in Vermont, license plates, issued sequentially in the ABC-123 format, cannot start with letters I or O, which makes sense, but J is also forbidden, I guess because it's also too similar to a zero. The plates go right from HZZ to KAA. We'll have to wait a few years to see what happens with Q, as this tiny state has yet to even get all the way through the KAA-KZZ series.
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As I recall NC did the same thing and I don't think Q was used.
 
CTListener said:
Here in Vermont, license plates, issued sequentially in the ABC-123 format, cannot start with letters I or O, which makes sense, but J is also forbidden, I guess because it's also too similar to a zero. The plates go right from HZZ to KAA. We'll have to wait a few years to see what happens with Q, as this tiny state has yet to even get all the way through the KAA-KZZ series.
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In serialization schemes, yes, glyphs are often avoided that can be mistaken for others (OCR/ALPRS resolution limits, specks of contamination, and screening like smoke/fog/smudged flatbed scanner glass). This mainly means 1 = I and Q = O = 0. But some fonts render V with the top 2/3s of their vertical elements straight (recall the 80x25 text mode version of V, and old fixed-font printers). I doubt they would have ever feared J being mistaken for O or 1, but J = U is possible with extreme point perspective foreshortening or large contamination specks like those one might see on plates due to road splatter (although in that event, one would think letters like F would also be verboten to prevent misrecognitions as letters like E).

20th Century Fox Television has a serial numbering scheme for every television series and episode it produces. The format is ScccNN (S = season number as 1-9 plus A-Z for 10 and up), ccc = unique show ID (e.g. ABF = The Simpsons, ABX = The X-Files, ACX = Family Guy, ASA = Bob's Burgers, AYW = The X-Files reboot, ATS = American Horror Story, etc.), and NN = episode number (01-99). People started noticing that all of Fox's long-lived shows were skipping I, O, Q and U for the season prefix. When the completely unexpected ended up happening to the creators of this numbering scheme (The Simpsons lasting all the way to and beyond Z), they gave up on OCR compatibility and proceeded to use U, then Q, then O, etc. for the seasons following Z. Apparently by then, they figured that the days of real paper records were so officially over, OCR considerations were no longer necessary. (Just this year, the studio had to enhance this universal production numbering format to simply give up on letters. Simpsons episodes airing during the 2024-2025 period -- its 35th season -- will now be numbered simply 35ABF##, it seems.)

Fascinating information about the origins of the A and N callsign prefixes, by the way (Army and Navy). I had never understood why those were chosen. W also makes sense for west coast (at least during the military days). But I am curious why they chose K for the east during that same period. Does anyone happen to have the answer to that one last part of the riddle?
 
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Some stations across Canada have their call signs starting with VF followed by 4 numbers
 
Mediafrog+ said:
One thing I’ve wondered: In a hemisphere where most countries speak Spanish, note that K and W are not part of the “proper” Spanish alphabet. Could this have something to do with the predominately English speaking USA beng assigned those letters?
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Yet in many if not all those nations individual stations had call letters with those letters. XEW, the dean of all Mexican stations, has a "W" in its calls as does the national station of Guatemala, TGW.

Of course, in most of Latin America stations did not even use the calls on the air, even early on; they used names. I've mentioned before that in the 60's in Ecuador we were not even allowed to use calls as an identifier on the air... we had to register our name.
Mediafrog+ said:
Of course part of the “A“ series is assigned to the U.S. for non-broadcast purposes. So is “N”, though there have been proposals (and attempts) to make it available for broadcasting.

Huh? Why would using the same letter as the beginning of the country’s name make no sense? Would you say the same thing about “J” being used in Japan, which actually is the case?
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And, using "our" alphabet, "Japan" is actually "Nipon" as in the state broadcaster Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai.

Looking at latin America, you have calls unrelated to the nation's name such as LR for Argentina, HC for Ecuador, HJ for Colombia, HO for Panama, TI for Costa Rica, YV for Venezuela, CP for Bolivia, CB for Chile, CX for Uruguay, TG fro Guatemala, YS for El Salvador, and so on... no real relation to the name of the nation.
 
gr8oldies said:
What I seem to remember was most of the staff were on missionary duty and had to raise their own support.
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I never heard about raising their own support, and in early 1964 I was co-host of the HCJB DX show and over the years had good friendships with the HCJB engineering staff who often helped me with interesting projects, including the first FM in the country.
 
Markxxx said:
The W calls were used for ships on the America's west coast. The K calls were used for ships on the East and Gulf coasts.

When commercial stations started they were flipped around so commercial stations on the east used W calls and those out west used K calls.

Later N were used for the navy and AAA-ALZ, were used for Army. This designatin is not followed anymore. I read (but can't find a source) that the rest of the A group was assigned to Germany and then taken from and reassigned to the US after WWI.

Amature call signs can start with K,W,N or A and I they used to use X for experimental stations.
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Experimental stations have never started with a X.. The X is usually the first letter in the suffix of the call sign such as WA2Xyz And those calls are used in any experimental mode including stations experimenting in the expanded broadcast band for testing ground conductivity etc..
 
DavidEduardo said:
I never heard about raising their own support, and in early 1964 I was co-host of the HCJB DX show and over the years had good friendships with the HCJB engineering staff who often helped me with interesting projects, including the first FM in the country.
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That's typically what missionaries do.
 
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