Since I’ve become more involved with amateur radio – including getting my Extra class license – I decided that I wanted to get a vanity call sign. My original call sign, KB3RLM, was assigned sequentially by the FCC when they gave me my initial license. That’s how it works for everyone at first.

A lot of people stick with their initial call sign for their entire lives, and that’s totally fine to do. Once you establish yourself on the airwaves, your call sign is how everyone knows you, so it can be tricky to go through a change because then you end up having to re-introduce yourself. It’s a lot like getting a new phone number.

So why bother changing? Well, there are several different types of call signs, so lets break down the structure of the system quickly:

All U.S. call signs start with either an A, K, N, or W. The original one that I had was what is called a “2×3” – a two-letter prefix, followed by a numerical region code, and then a three-letter suffix. The region code of “3” is assigned to licenses from Delaware, DC, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. One of the advantages of the sequential system is that it’s easy to estimate how long someone has been a ham (at least within your own region). I got KB3RLM in the summer of 2008, while my son Isaac got his KD3BSR in the summer of 2025.

If you have at least a Technician license, you can apply for a “1×3” which in the U.S. begins with K, N, or W, followed by a region code, and then a 3-letter suffix. These are fairly popular because these used to be handed out sequentially until they ran out of them, and a lot of folks try to get their initials in the suffix. The most sought-after call signs are the “1×2” (like my friend N3RY has) and “2×1” (like my friend WQ3Y has). These are the shortest call signs that you can get and people who are serious about making a LOT of contacts in a short amount of time (like during radio contests) find these to be very desirable. This is especially true of folks who operate with Morse code (“CW” in ham lingo). The “1×2” and “2×1” call signs are only available to holders of the highest-level Extra class license. That’s your incentive to study hard!

But contests don’t appeal as much to me. When I applied, I was trying to get a “1×3” that incorporated all three of my initials in the suffix. Unfortunately, I hit a snag because of the 2025 U.S. Federal Government Shutdown and the call sign that I wanted had it’s expiration date extended after I had applied. The call sign that I ended up with – which is still a very fine call sign – is AD3PS.

This is a format we haven’t discussed yet, the “2×2”. It was originally available to the holders of the old Advanced class license (beginning with a K, N, or W), and since the Extra class is a higher license, we can apply for them as well. In fact, a “2×2” that begins with an A is ONLY available to Extra class holders, and if you ask for a new sequential call sign on your paperwork when you get your Extra license, you’ll get one of these.

So my new call sign immediately identifies me as an Extra class ham, from Maryland / Delaware, and I was able to get one with my initials, PS, in the suffix. I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out.

If you’re thinking about getting a vanity call sign, I can highly recommend the websites radioqth.net, which has a very useful search tool; and ae7q.com which has a TON of different ways to look up licenses and even does application predictions. Once the change goes through, be sure to check out this post by Colin Cogle for a checklist of all the things you need to update in our digital ham radio world. All of these sites were very helpful in getting me through the process.

There is a lot of spirit in the building I work in. It’s a really terrific environment. There is a core group of folks who find ways to do little celebrations throughout the year, and it makes work a genuinely fun place to come every day.

Among the events planned this holiday season is a door decorating contest. Now as the sole IT guy in my building, I have my own office space with a door and I’m kind of on my own. I’m not particularly creative or “crafty” but I started to think about how I could bring some nerd flavor to the contest. I knew I wanted to use an Arduino microcontroller and a few of the assorted electronic parts I have around the house. The thought occurred to me to create some type of Holiday Cheer-o-Meter.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. When it comes down to it, I wasn’t as concerned with competing – I just wanted to see if I could make my vision come together and actually work. I also thought this would be a fun project to bring the boys in on. I explained what I was thinking to them and Isaac immediately wanted to help with the circuit design and programming. The Sunday before Thanksgiving we got to work.

Being a holiday decoration, it’s going to have to incorporate some lights. It would be nice if I could run them all from the Arduino, and if I could do fancy things with at least some of them. I found some cool RGB LED arrays on Amazon that are controlled with a WS2812 chip. This means I could have 8 color-changing lights in a tight row while only using 1 of the control pins on the Arduino. That would become our “scanner.” While we were out with family at Homestead Gardens, I also found some very tiny (and inexpensive) battery-powered string LEDs. Since these used 3 AA batteries, they would be easy to run off of the 5V power rail in the Arduino.

The meter itself would be made from a servo motor, allowing us to control the position in degrees with some simple code. For a fun twist, we also found a “pitches” library that allowed us to program music to play through a small piezo buzzer when the meter showed its reading.

All told, it took a little more than 2 hours to do a tiny bit of soldering, put together the circuit on the breadboard, and set up our microcontroller program. It took much longer for me to get the whole thing to look, well, pretty.

The user interface is extremely simple. A single button starts the “scan”.

Once the button is pressed, the LEDs on the front cycle through red and green flashing sequences. A pseudo-random number between 0 and 4 is generated. If 0 is picked, the whole system bottoms out and the meter displays the Grinch sequence. If a number greater than 0 is picked, another pseudo-random number is pulled between 90 and 180 to set the degree of cheerfulness.

I like to think that the pseudo-random number generator in the Arduino can be affected by the “vibes” of the environment. Quantum entanglement and all. 🙂

This project was extremely fun to make. Microcontrollers like the Arduino make little projects like this pretty accessible these days. So far, the response at the office has been very positive. I’ll be sure to post an update once the competition is over.