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Radi prefix meaning5/7/2023 ![]() The overview of anomalous call signs taken here from Mr. The map of the border switch to the Mississippi taken here from Grilling Addiction, ‘our source for grilling tips, tricks, techniques and recipes all year round’. The general K/W map taken here from Media Heritage, a website ‘Preserving Radio and Television History’. White, “n 1987, the Federal Communications Commission noted that the current staff practice was to define the remainder of the boundary as “a line from headwaters to a point just east of International Falls”. Black: reason unknown – KFIZ, KQV, KYW.Īs noted by Thomas H. Light Green: government assigned call – KTGG (because someone mistook Michigan for Missouri).ħ. ![]() Two Ks in W Land (KFNS, KWAM) and four Ws in K Country (WDBQ, WHO, WMT, WSUI).Ħ. Red: Exceptional grant of a request to deviate from the general rule. Dark Green: Regular radio stations that originated on the western (K) bank of the Mississippi before moving over to the eastern (W) bank: KOTC, KSGM.ĥ. Three extant examples, all having moved from W Country into K Land: WBBZ, WIBW, WMBH.Ĥ. Gray: Formerly ‘portable’ stations that got their call sign in one zone before taking root in the other one. Only remaining station: KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA.ģ. Purple: Anomalous assignment, in 1920-’21, of KD call sign to stations across the country – both east and west of the Mississippi. However, all newer stations were assigned K call signs.Ģ. A total of 11 call sign ‘fossils’ remain: WBAP, WDAY, WEW, WHB, WJAG, WKY, WNAX, WOAI, WOC, WOI, WTAW. A grandfather clause allowed the circa 170 existing radio stations in the switchover zone to keep their pre-1923 W call sign. Blue: Remnants of the situation before January 1923 in the switchover zone. This map shows them all, and colour-codes them into seven categories:ġ. There are currently 27 exceptions to the general K/W divide – 9 Ks in W Country, and 18 Ws in K Land. This explains some of the anomalous call signs still in existence today, if not quite all of them. But a grandfather clause provided that those radio stations in those states which already had a W call sign could keep it. Īfter January 1923, new radio stations in the switchover states would be assigned a K call initial rather than a W one. A decade into the first federal regulation of station call signs, the K/W line was moved to the Mississippi, turning Texas and 10 other ‘eastern’ (W) states into ‘western’ (K) ones. ![]() This was possibly done to continue distinguishing between ship radios in the Gulf of Mexico (which started with K) and land radios in Texas (which started with W when it was an ‘eastern’ radio state). But that dividing line lay further to the west than it does now: it followed the border between New Mexico in the west with Texas and Oklahoma in the east, then north along Colorado’s eastern border with Kansas and Nebraska, Wyoming’s eastern limits with Nebraska and South Dakota and finally Montana’s with the Dakotas. Quite early, the border between K Country and W Land had to be fixed geographically. ![]() In the latter scenario, the aim was to extend W call signs to radio stations on land in the west of the country, and K to terrestrial stations in the east – but the instructions got scrambled somewhere between the draft of the order and its implementation. to facilitate the distinction between radio stations on land and at sea) or, as some sources state, the result of miscommunication. It’s unclear whether this practise, which precedes call signs for terrestrial radio, is the reverse by intention (i.e. Ship radios on America’s Pacific coast start with W, and with K on the Atlantic side. Incidentally, radio call signs are reversed out on the ocean. Add a dash to each, and you get W (dot-dash-dash, or. It seems that the letters A and N apply only to military radio stations (A to Army and Air Force, N to Navy and Coast Guard) – and that they are the basis of the otherwise seemingly random choice for K and W. ![]()
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