Suffix

Unassignable Suffixes

But at an early stage — and even recent days as a mistake for 7L4TTT (now he is 7L4WWW) — some authority's branches issued some OSO, TTT and XXX suffixes. Only JA9TTT is still alive.

Variation of the Q-Code Related Withheld Range

Clubs — Suffixes YAA-ZZZ

Suffixes YAA-ZZZ are reserved for club stations. Therefore, any club station in Japan should have a six-character call sign. (This may be a disadvantage in contests. The Japanese authority does not provide shorter call signs for this purpose.)
JR6YAA-ZZZ for club stations in Okinawa,
JD1YAA-ZZZ for those in Ogasawara and
7J#YAA-YMZ for foreigners' first licensed 1993-1999 (7J6YNA-YQZ for Okinawa).

A complete listing of club stations is HERE: ja-club20110326.xls for those interested (in Japanese, 1MB, as of Mar. 26, 2011).

Exception 1 — Repeaters and Their Controllers

JP#YAA-ZZZ and JQ6YAA-ZZZ in Okinawa are allocated to repeaters and their controllers.

Exception 2 — Special Event Stations / ARISS School Contact Temporary Stations / Experience Temporary Stations

8J / 8N special event stations and ARISS School Contact temporary stations may happen to choose their suffix from YAA-ZZZ.

Experience temporary stations are sequentially assigned 8J#YAA-ZZZ call signs.

Single Letter Suffixes

Surprisingly enough, the authority permitted epoch-making "two-by-one" call signs for the stations commemorating FIFA World Cup in 2002.

On June 24, 2004, single letter suffix 8J#$ and 8N#$ became to be officially assignable under the new criteria. The first example is 8N6A on July 6, 2004.

Two Characters Suffixes

Two characters suffixes were assigned only for JA# (very old timers) and JR6 (fairly old timers in Okinawa) prefixes. No JH#AA, JE#AA, .... , JS#AA stations. However, there are some exceptions for JR# repeater stations and 7J / 8J special event or Antarctica stations. The suffix RL means a JARL station.

On June 24, 2004, two character suffixes 8J#*$ and 8N#*$ became to be officially assignable under the new criteria. The first example is 8N#HQ on July 3, 2004.

Experimental Stations We amateurs are not alone. In Japan, experimental stations also use the same two-by-two format call signs (J$#$$), and two-by-ones (J$#$). Call Sign Format including the Call Area Number Format Example Category two-by-one JS2H Experimental Station two-by-two JS3AK JA1AA Experimental Station Amateur Station two-by-three JA1AAA Amateur Station cf. JA9553 JA001G JA01TA Aircraft An example above, JS2H was an experimental VHF FM broadcast station in 1960 — aka JS2AO 1958-1960 — and in its later years, it became FM Tokyo, JOAU-FM. Some of the good examples for us are as follows: 1.8MHz Band Acquisition Trial (1963) JS2A in Shimizu Port in Shizuoka, to prove that there is no bad influence of amateurs to LORAN (LOng-RAnge Navigation) Dummy Satellite Communication System (1976) JS3AK: Dummy transponder at the top of Mt. Fuji JS3AL: Controller in Asagiri-kogen Park JS3AM at the JARL Tokai Office in Nagoya JS2FK at the JARL HQ in Tokyo QRO Field Test (1996) JS2HM for a field test toward our 1kW output ticket, which is QROed from the previous 500W limitation cf. D-STAR Experimental (2001-2003?), used not Call Sign but Call Name JARL Jikken 1: a relay station, 1200MHz and 10GHz JARL Jikken 2: a relay station, 1200MHz and 10GHz JARL Jikken 10-19: terminal stations, 1200MHz (Digital Voice ... 5, Data .... 5) JARL Jikken 20-29: terminal stations, 1200MHz JARL Jikken 30-31: terminal stations, 1200MHz AMBE In addition, JG2AS has been a WWVB-equivalent long wave standard frequency station in Japan (now changed to JJY). Please reminded that these stations were not defined as "amateur stations" but "experimental stations." There are some differences on the area numbers between experimental stations and amateurs, because ITU prohibits 0 and 1 for an experimental station. Numeral for Each Branch Category Kanto Shin'etsu Tokai Hokuriku Kinki Chugoku Shikoku Kyushu Tohoku Hokkaido Okinawa Experimental Station 2 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 Amateur Station 1 0 2 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 6

Four Characters Suffixes

A four-character suffix call sign is assigned only for a special event station as 8J#***$ or 8N#***$ since June 24, 2004. The first example is 8J4ARDF on July 17, 2004.

Five Characters Suffixes

A five-character suffix call sign is assigned only for a special event station as 8J#****$ or 8N#****$ since June 24, 2004 according to the result of WRC-03. The first example is 8N3ARISS on July 7, 2004. Though ITU doesn't limit the length of a special call sign, Japan limits a suffix up to five characters.

cf. The Longest Call Sign World Record