I just hope Russia doesn't introduce a special event station commemorating the life of Tolstoy using the text of War And Peace as a callsign.
No. I'm saying what I said, not what you inferred. To reiterate, this is an FT8 problem, not a callsign problem. Misplacing blame doesn't serve any purpose.
Once upon a time in the annals of U.S. amateur radio callsign history; 1x2,2x2 and 1x3 callsigns beginning with "W" or "K" were deemed to be 'preferred callsigns' while 2x3 callsigns beginning with WA or WB were standard callsigns. The last of the sequentially issued 1x3 callsigns was issued in 1964 in the 3rd radio district. https://archive.org/details/AnOverviewOfAmateurCallSignsPastAndPresent
I think the log callsigns are fun. If I see one spotted or I hear one I work it. I think we should have an automotive special events week and use our call mixed into the VIN of what ever you are driving.
I don't mind them particularly but I operate CW almost entirely, which obviously would have no trouble accommodating such calls. I manage a yearly CW event (K3Y straight key event in January) and, checking through the logs, we do get some of these extended calls. The only challenge for me is writing a regex ("regular expression" pattern matching algorithm) that can always distinguish between legitimate call sign formats and these alphabet soup calls. But it's not really a big problem.
It’s not as annoying as US amateurs getting vanity callsigns for districts other than the one they’re in.
2Z: Even when one was required to have a call from the district in which they lived, there were a fair number of districts that covered such a large geographic area, that things like pointing a directional antenna precisely was not possible just from the call sign. The 4th, 5th, 7th, and 0 districts cover a significant number of states making precise antenna pointing virtually impossible unless one knew the exact location of the station or just turned the antenna for the best signal strength which is what you really have to do anyway, even now. Glen, K9STH
I don't like them, either... but ITU says they are okay, so we are stuck with them. Interestingly, the only countries with large enough populations to need long calls have very few licensees, so the long call change was really unnecessary.
