Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: quan@hplabsb.hp.com (Suu Quan) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Radio Station Names (Wxxx - Kxxx) Message-ID: Date: 5 Sep 89 23:03:48 GMT Organization: HP Labs, Manufacturing & Measurement Systems Lab, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 28 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 348, message 6 of 10 In article , mcvax!irst.it!bellutta@ uunet.uu.net (Paolo Bellutta) writes: > I noticed that American radio stations names starts with W or K. Someone > told me that if the station started in AM it has a name starting with W > otherwise (FM only stations) it starts with K. Is it true? Is there a > (historical?) reason for that? I'm just curious. Trying to remember some pieces of when I was in the Navy some 20 years ago. I believe any station using the radio waves must take their call sign from an internationally allocated name space. For large countries like the US and USSR, the name space is generous. I think the US alone uses W*, K* and some other combinations. Little countries use a more restricted name space : ie Vietnam use XVV* (I recall someone saying that Mexico's name space is X*, its probably a subset of X*). When ever talking to (or receiving Morse-code messages from) an unknown station, we usually go to a book that will tell us who the other guy is. For the most part, the data carries no intelligence information: "HMS Elizabeth the 4th, UK" And also, the names are note restricted to 4 characters, nor are they restricted to alphabetic characters alone (numbers are used too). -- Suu Quan (TELNET/415) 857-3594 quan@hpcmfs.corp.HP.COM HEWLETT-PACKARD, Corp Manuf Factory Systems quan@hpcmfs Palo Alto, CA 94304 suu quan /HP0080/04