WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Just wanted to say that I hooked up the old 27MHz CB (PC122XL) today, for the first time in approx. 10 years, and I could not believe it. First contact was to a station in Mildura, VIC. He was coming through as though he was local. I couldn't help but feel the operator was local and taking the piss considering the signal strength coming in. I am officially hooked, again. A few minutes later, I was talking to two stations just outside of Melbourne. Then after a few failed contacts, the skip evaporated. My antenna isn't anything special, just a factory tuned whip on the roof of the house.

I am booked in to do the Foundation licence course at the end of the month, and cannot wait to get on the air.

Just a question, though. Do we just create our own callsigns? What is the go?

Cheers,
Brad.

Reevesy89 wrote:Just a question, though. Do we just create our own callsigns? What is the go?

Sort of. You can look up if a callsign is available and pay extra for it. WA foundation callsigns are VK6Fxyz where xyz is your unique part (letters).
Or you can just take what you get for the standard fee, then wait until you upgrade before paying extra for a custom callsign.
The callsigns are organised through the WIA. This looks like the page. There are some four-letter callsigns starting with F you won't be allowed to have

The guys at Ham College will help you with all that (assuming you are going through them)

robbage wrote:

Reevesy89 wrote:Just a question, though. Do we just create our own callsigns? What is the go?

Sort of. You can look up if a callsign is available and pay extra for it. WA foundation callsigns are VK6Fxyz where xyz is your unique part (letters).

Robbage is spot on. For the Foundation licence, the callsign has to be VK then a digit (6 for WA), then the letter F then three other letters that a) haven't already been taken and b) don't make an obvious inappropriate word

So you could choose VK6FRVS or VK6FREV or three letters that are your initials, or whatever you like really.

The other option is to just get a random callsign allocated to you, it'll still follow that format but they just give you the "next off the list" so they start with FAAA, then FAAB, FAAC, and so on.

Ultimately the difference is $15 when it comes to paying for everything on the exam day.

To see whether a callsign is available to be chosen go here: http://www.wia.org.au/licenses/licensing/publiclist/ and set the search to VK6, Foundation and then put in the last three letters (it assumes the 'F') and if it shows up in the box below, you can choose it on the exam day.

Good to hear you're already hooked again on 27MHz though, when you're a licenced amateur you'll have even more frequencies to play with!