In article . net, "KØHB"
writes:

One of those petitions asked that they
allow amateurs to retain their calls when moving because many hams had
become 'connected' to their call signs, almost as a 'name', and did not
wish to surrender the call when moving. Finding no regulatory,
enforcement, nor "good operating practice" reason that a ham shouldn't
keep their callsign, they ruled in favor of the petitioner.

Yep.

There's also another factor: availability of callsigns in the new area.

There was a time, back when the ARS was much smaller, that FCC would try to
give "corresponding" calls when someone moved. W1ICP was W0ICP, for example.
But that became "impractical".

I got N2EY (sequentially issued) when I moved from EPA to WNY in 1977. By the
time I moved back (1979), the FCC was not reissuing "abandoned" 1x2 calls.
Something about their computer system.

What it meant in my case was that if I'd asked for a 3-land call, I could have
gotten a sequentially-issued 3-land 1x2. But N2EY would not have been reissued
to anyone. So there would be one less Extra with a 1x2, and I decided to keep
N2EY.

Did I do the wrong thing?

I guess it's no problem when you are running a full gallon and
have the Internet right there at the operating position, Hans.

Whether I'm running a "full gallon" or 100mW (which is closer to what I
normally run) doesn't make it any easier to devine the source of a CQ.
And what does the internet have to do with it?

If you have internet access in the shack, you could look up a callsign heard
and see what state the ham is in. Not a new idea, though - there used to be
this thing called a "callbook"

73 de Jim, N2EY