Good News for Vanity Applicants

[NO8M]

According the recently emailed ARRL letter, the NPRM currently being looked at (not the one including the code requirement..that one is behind the 8 ball right now) is made of a plethera of different proposed rules. The one that grabbed my attention was that the FCC is considering putting a limit on the number of vanity applications a person may submit in one day.

Seems like a good idea to me. Here's why:

1) It would level the playing field for folks applying for the same vanity call sign.
2) How many man-hours are wasted in the Commission with all the extra applications & all the time spent doing refunds for all the applications that don't get approved? Some folks apply 50 or more times for a call sign. Even if that person wins, that's 49+ refund applications that have to get processed.

The government is slow enough. Maybe this will help them improve turnaround time on regular and vanity applications. Thoughts?

[KD6NIG]

Don't refund.

That would stop it in a heartbeat http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[NO8M]

Yeah, I bet it would. *grinz* That or we'd have to read a bunch of annoying posts about how so-and-so is bragging about his $2190 license...the new breed of elites! :P

[KD6NIG]

The way I see it, you want a callsign that bad, and for that much money, you can HAVE it.

It would be much more fair though. Let all the rich people have a few weeks at it, then they will be done and us schmoes can put our one chip on the table with everyone else and try for the lottery draw.

Honestly, I think I'm going to keep my callsign. I'd rather spend my money on equipment. So what if I have a long callsign. Makes my CQ's on 6m just that smidge longer.

Course, a better system would allow only one person to put in one entry for a call, period. No payment required. Once the person is drawn, they have 7 days to complete the transaction. FedEx the dang payment if you have to, you want that call so bad. After 7 days (or if the payment fails) redraw, keep going until someone goes through with it. And once you get one, you're stuck with it for a minimum of one year. I know a few people who have changed calls about 3 times because after they got it, they didn't like it.

But hey, thats just me. They could go E-Bay and put the callsigns on there, but again, only the richest would win. But the FCC would have some enforcement money.

We'll see what happens. Whatever it is, someone will be unhappy with it.

[NO8M]

Hmmm, if they do ebay, would they list with "Buy It Now"? hi hi