I received 3 emails from Ofcom earlier today with my updated full licence, intermediate licence and foundation licence. This seems very contradictory to me as I thought Ofcom only wanted us to have one licence so therefore my understanding was that they’d only update my full licence and surrender both my intermediate and foundation licences. Just wondering if despite the recent outcome from the consultation if Ofcom are now happy for us to keep all our licences?
Jimmy M0HGY
The intention is for people to have just one licence. But that is the future. Right now you may have the licences so they have to tell you for each licence that the terms have been changed.
You need to visit the family home - mainly the shack - while I’m doing 10m on The Cloud, while you’ve still got all three callsigns… Just saying.
I could potentially provide you dad with 5 contacts from the family home on 10m using my 3 callsigns and the optional E RSL also.
Jimmy M0HGY
I’m pretty sure Tom was joking [he doesn’t need a ‘leg up’ being ranked currently at #1 and #11 in the 10m Challenge in the UK and worldwide respectively] but Jimmy’s comment raised a question in my mind: Does using and not using the (new) optional E RSL (e.g. ME0ALC and M0ALC) count as two distinct callsigns as far as the 10m Challenge is concerned or indeed SOTA points in general?
Whether it does or not will probably need one of the software gurus to answer.
However, I don’t think it should. The optional RSL is of similar status now to the optional suffix. G6PJZ (shameless plug 
) is the same as GE6PJZ or even G6PJZ/P.
Adding to what Andy said (with which I agree, using multiple callsigns from the same person - does not seem to be fair or “in the spirit of SOTA” - I realise Tom/Jimmy were joking). In earlier Ofcom documentation the “CALL SIGN” is defined as not including the RSL and the CEPT considers this in the same way, so MM2ABC operating in Germany under the CEPT agreement would operate at DL/M2ABC (not DL/MM2ABC).
73 Ed.
There’s only one way to find out … we’ll have to get this skedded Jimmy
AFAIK, the Database does strip out the / and anything following it in looking for uniqueness of calls. It doesn’t disallow variations in prefix though.
Are you sure?
You can NEVER be sure …
I bet they’re in the bookies now placing a bet on themselves, not to win.
That probably makes sense as I think the SOTA database wants to distinguish between the various home nations within the UK. However, the inclusion in the callsign of the new E RSL option should change nothing [technically, it’s redundant], it’s still England, and both callsign variants belong to the same licensee/operator. It would be interesting to know how the database software dealt with the optional “R” (for ‘royal’) prefix variant that Ofcom introduced for two months last year.
I’m not sure why that needs to be tied to the callsign RSL As far as I see it, SOTA needs to identify 2 things: the identity of the operator and the summit. They are not necessarily linked geographically (in terms of callsign). For example I could legally activate EI/IN-006 as EI/G6PJZ, GI6PJZ or even G6PJZ
The important thing is that the database attributes the activation to the correct summit and to me (irrespective of which version of my callsign I use)