As you may have notice a lot of Cornish stations have added K to there calls during 2016 as I have. MK3FEH other calls are GK 2K and MK.
Note I am not using the K in me call during chasing of Sota,s unless requested. So if you require my MK call please ask as will slip it in during contact for you as have had good number people asking during me while am chasing. Its not a problem.
But all being well, will try to get too some Cornish Sota’s during 2016 and will be using call MK3FEH/p as an activator.
Also any one interested in a face book page on K 4 Kernow please pop in and join.
Yes the K is being used like a special event callsign. i.e. MK and GK are not permanent UK callsign prefixes and as such are not listed in the CEPT document covering reciprocal licencing - so you’ll still need to use M/VK1DA or M/VK2UH - you can’t even use G/ as that is not what is in the CEPT TR 61/01 document.
As Rick said also - only those living in Cornwall can apply for a change to their (UK) licence (a Notice Of Variation) to use MK or GK or 2K (?). So for example someone from London, on holiday in Cornwall cannot use the K.
As the above gents commented.
Its limited to local based residents of the county of Cornwall
And temp runs from 1st Jan till 31st Dec 2016 and also can only be used with in Cornwall, like say I cross the border into Devon our only neighbouring county, The K is dropped from the call.
Been there, done it, got the T-shirt. I’ve had 2x Scottish Homecoming prefixes, ‘A’, an Olympic ‘O’, a Queen’s Jubilee ‘Q’ (or was it ‘R’?) I’m sure I had an ‘E’ once. And I must admit that I now get bored with them fairly quickly. I think I have had at least once QSO with each one. I did use the A prefix for a while in 2009? but realised that MIKE ALPHA ZERO takes longer to say than MIKE MIKE ZERO. Anything that makes a long callsign longer is not a good thing!
You’ll get bored Karl. You’ll forget and use it when you’re out of Cornwall and some wag will helpfully correct you. Or worse because of your current licence type, give you a hard time. I’ll give it a few months and use will drop to just a few die-hards.
The best special prefix, however, was when there was some big in event in Wales. All stations in Wales (irrespective of their home QTH) could change their MW/GW/2W1/2W0 prefix to 2C for a month. In those days, Novice licensees could not use 2m. Myself and Brian G4ZRP had been doing some checks from Cyrn-y-Brain summit for a contest. When we were finished we called CQ on 2m with a handy as 2C4ZRP/P. The number of experts who came and told us “novices are not allowed on 2m” was impressive. Boy did they get upset when they were told 2C4ZRP/P was a full licence.
Only if your elected reps in local government and or Westminster can pull the right strings with their chums in OFCOM, Walt. !
There is a WPX award and so the prefix should drum up business at home or away.
I had a lot of fun with GO6TUH (limit 600 QSO) and GR6TUH (limit 100). GO6TUH was very popular I guess encouraged by changing the QSL design over the period (see QRZ page for that call). It made a nice change to have a pile up and dx chasing me rather than the other way round. I put a limit on each call to reduce the QSL work load
Bye for now - heavy heavy rain now in East Sussex with strong wind gusts …oh well.
Talking of changing callsign prefixes, All Australian Amateurs are allowed to replace the VK with AX on three standard days per year - Australia Day in January, Anzac Day in April and International Telecommunications Day in May. Having the possibility of working the AX call only on three days in the year, certainly makes it a really attractive call to use and get chased with.
