First, before we get started on choosing your call sign, a little "how-to" information.There are three great sites that will give you all the information you need to know to be successful in applying for and obtaining your selected call sign:

http://www.vanityhq.com/ by Michael Carroll - N4MC

the ARRL site at http://www.remote.arrl.org/arrlvec/vanity.html

and http://www.fcc.gov/wtb/amateur/vanity.html provided by FCC.

What makes an "ideal call sign"? First of all there is no universal "ideal call sign". Everyone's choice will be personal for them and limited by the group of call signs available to them based on their license class, geographic location, previously issued call signs, etc. Your first step should be to check http://www.vanityhq.com/  for available and soon to be available call signs. Selection of your "ideal call sign" can first be divided into 3 categories based on your reason for wanting a new call. I have divided these into Personalized,  Cute and Optimized Characters.

1) Personalized call sign choices can include initials, name, location, nickname, club name, etc. Selection of these is usually pretty easy, simply browse through available call signs to see if one matching your choice is available. In order to increase your chances of finding something that matches do not forget to check all combinations, not just suffixes (e.g., K3JIM, KJ3IM, WQ5RP, etc.).

2) Cute choices can include a wide variety calls that are visually (W0XX), phonetically (K4BFT - "big fat turkey"), initially (K4FBI, W6USN), acronyms (K2LED), spell words or abbreviations (K8PIE, K4YL, K7OM). Often the numbers 1 and 0 visual similarity to i and o are used to "spell" cute combinations (K1TE, K0RN, etc.)

3) Optimized Character (OC) call sign choices are based on selecting a set and sequence of letters and numbers that benefit the call holder with one or more advantages including easier to send, easier to receive, fewer errors by receiver, quicker exchanges, etc. OC calls can be the most challenging to select as criteria can be very subjective and personal. I stewed for long time on selecting my new OC call sign. I finally made up a spreadsheet and ranked all the potential calls in a number of criteria categories then ranked their scores. The criteria used was collected from a number of sources including articles by experienced contesters and DXers, phonetics studies, psychology and learning studies, graphic arts and marketing studies, personal experience and subjective input from fellow hams.
 

The criteria considered included:

Other criteria you could use might include difficulty in sending a letter in CW, letters difficult in certain foreign languages, similarity to "well known" call signs, etc.. I rated my selected calls on 1(best) to 10 basis for each category (either subjectively or by numerical value depending on criteria) then found average score for each call. Well, this may sound obsessive (and my wife told me it definitely was!), but I had my old call for 19 years, used it many thousands of times and hope I do not need to change my call again soon.

After you have selected and ranked your call sign selections, you need to complete your FCC Vanity Application. For invaluable help with this process, please refer to the three urls presented near beginning of this article. Then the wait begins as you hope the FCC grants you one of your top choices. Fortunately the process usually takes less than one month. I hope to hear you on the air soon with your "ideal call sign".

Download a Spreadsheet for Call Comparisons (in MS Excel Format) from my FTP Directory- callsign.xls

All rights reserved - Anthony A. Luscre July 2001