Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: mcvax!irst.it!bellutta@uunet.uu.net (Paolo Bellutta) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Radio Station Names (Wxxx - Kxxx) Message-ID: Date: 8 Sep 89 08:30:38 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 55 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 359, message 2 of 4 X-GATEWAY-WARNING: original 'Date' value is not valid USENET syntax X-Original-Date: Thu, 7 Sep 89 9:24:23 MET DST Fred R. Goldstein sent a very complete answer to my question. Since he lost the copy of his message he asked me to forward it to the net: I have to thank him and all of you for the resposnses. Paolo Bellutta I.R.S.T. vox: +39 461 810105 loc. Pante' di Povo fax: +39 461 810851 38050 POVO (TN) e-mail: bellutta@irst.uucp ITALY bellutta@irst.it From: goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: Radio Station Names (Wxxx - Kxxx) > In article , you write... > >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. The International Telecommunications Union allocates prefix codes for radio transmitters. The United States is pretty fastidious about assigning such "call letters" to every sort of service, including broadcasters. In other parts of the world, broadcasters may simply use names (i.e., "Orwell Radio" in Ipswich, UK) or non-ITU call signs (the ones beginning with "2" in Oz; "2" is assigned to the UK.) But some services, such as Amateur Radio and aviation (the same prefix codes are used for airplane registration), strictly follow ITU allocations. You can find a complete list in a number of Amateur Radio publications, such as the ARRL Logbook and the Callbooks. ITU prefices are allocated in three-character blocks, although usually only the first one or two characters is significant. For example, W, K, and N are entirely USA, so N-anything is USA, but AA-AL are USA while AMA-AZZ are shared among various countries (such as Pakistan AP and Argentina AZ). Italy owns the entire "I" range. France owns all of F, the UK owns "G", "M", "2" (2AA-2ZZ) and much of "V" (for overseas posessions). The USSR owns "U", "R" and a bunch of smaller blocks. There are three patterns for the first two digits. The oldest are letter-letter (AA-ZZ). After WWII they added number-letter (i.e., 4X and 4Z for Israel, 9Y for Trinidad, 3DA-3DM for Swaziland and 3DN-3DZ for Fiji -- that's the only case where the third character counts!). Eventually those ran out so they use letter-number (i.e., J3 for Grenada, Y2-Y9 for East Germany, Z2 for Zimbabwe). Note that letter-number is only possible when the first letter is not entirely owned by one country. Thus W, K, R, G, I, etc. can't be the first of a letter-number, but A, C, and D can. How countries make use of these is up to them. Canada uses Cxxx for broadcast, but VE for most Amateur. Sometimes amateurs use special event prefixes, just for fun, so we have to look on the master list to see what country it is. fred