"Dan/W4NTI" wrote in message
link.net...

"Dee Flint" wrote in message
...


Dan's point of a 1X3 being an indicator of an old timer does not hold
water.

Definitely not. Many holders of 1x3 calls got their licenses in the
1990s
and many new licenses today are getting 1x3 calls through the vanity
system since there are none available for sequential issue. However if
one looks only at the sequentially issued calls, the Ws are older than
the
Ks which in turn are older than the Ns.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE


I think you are trying to be a devils advocate here Dee. You should know
I
was refering to the time before incentive licensing. If you don't...you
do
now. So my comments are valid and correct.

Dan/W4NTI



Hello, Dan

That you may also have mis-read what I was saying. Before vanity calls
(incentive licensing was in the 1960s), you could be certain of an old timer
by the callsign. You could not be positive of a newer type call because if
you changed radio districts, you were issued a new sequentially assigned
call.

This is why Wayne Greene operated as W2NSD/1 for years. I don't know if he
owned or licensed real estate in New York to keep the W2NSD call, but
finally was able to keep it for his new QTH.

W2NSD is quite some time after a 1X2 call and Wayne goes back a *lot* of
years. He got his 50th (or was it more than 50?) year membership pin from
the ARRL back quite some time ago. I subscribed to 73 about 10 years ago,
so it may have been in that time frame. Assuming he did not get his license
at the age of two or three, plus quite a few years between the 1X2s and
W2NSD, I would suspect most of the original 1X1s are long SK. I suspect a
fair number of the original 1X3s are also gone. Perhaps not the majority,
but a fair number.

I make this statement only by personally knowing some of them and having an
idea of their age. The ones I knew are all SK.

Ooops. I do know a 1X2. He was WA2SEY and obtained a 1X2 via the vanity
call system. The only one I know is through the vanity call system. Ooops,
wait. I've heard a couple on the air locally. All vanity call signs.

Going through posts in one group, I've seen a lot of folks grabbing the 1X3s
via the vanity call system.

Due to personal experience, I suspect that a fair number of 1X3s are vanity
issue and am convinced that most, if not all, of the 1X2s are vanity issues.

Certainly, there are still a large number of 1X3s still around with a
non-vanity issued call. However, I suspect that in the 2nd district, these
would have run out sometime around 1959 or 1960. This sets a lower limit on
age of around 50. This would be for a child who obtained his or her ticket
just before they started with the WA prefixes here. Someone obtaining their
ticket then as a teenager should be around 60. You don't have to go too far
back through the K2XXX to approach W2XXX and now you're likely looking at
someone 80 years old or more. There were fewer amateurs then and callsigns
weren't issued at the machine-gun rate they were some decades later.

I mentioned K2BRE. Were he still alive, he would be in his mid to upper
80s. And that is still after the W2XXX calls. You expect me to believe
most of the 1X3s are 80 years old and older?

How many hams are around that are 90 years old?

This is why I suspect a fair number of the 1X3s are vanity calls. Of
course, other radio districts may not need go back nearly as many years to
achieve the 1X3s.

My first post was to point out that the WA and WB prefixes indicate folks
that are approaching 60 years old. I doubt any were obtained via vanity
calls. So, I suspect these folks have been licensed well over 40 years. I
cannot assume that with a 1X2 or 1X3.

Oh, I almost forgot W2OY. He's been SK for many years now, but other lids
have jumped right in to fill the gap.