"Daniel J. Morlan" wrote in message
om...

I have a certificate of completion, and the guy told me I could
transmit with it. This has me more-or-less scratching my head, as I
was led to believe I could only transmit once I'm in the FCC database.
Don't want to start yakking it up before I can legally do so.

If your certificate of completion is for an upgrade and you already have
a callsign, you can use it to get on the air with new privileges. But if
this is a 'first time' call, and you don't have your callsign yet, then no,
you cannot get on the air.

However, you do not need to have the license physically 'in your hand'.
You can watch the FCC callsign database on the net, and as soon as
your name appears with a callsign associated with it, you can get on
the air with that.