As for legality, for FCC licensed stations, signing "/QRP" is perfectly
legal. FCC Regs 97.119(c) allows for "self-assigned indicators." There is an
interesting gotcha to the rule. The last sentence of the regulation says "No
self-assigned may conflict with any other indicator specified by the FCC
rules, or with any prefix assigned to another country." Q signals, including
QRP, pose no such conflict. However, as W3BE points out, other popular
"self-assigned indicators" are illegal, particularly "/M," commonly used by
mobile stations, a prefix assigned to the UK, and "/R" commonly used by
repeaters, a prefix assigned to Russia, and used for special ham callsigns
for Russian WW2 veterans.
73,
Steve Kercel
AA4AK
--------------
Interesting what you find when reading the rules! However, I wonder if your
illustration of signing "/M" for mobile really is a problem. It's my
understanding that when operating from a foreign country you would place
that country's prefix in front of your call, not at the end as a suffix. In
other words, in the U.K. I would sign M/W7AQK (or G/W7AQK?) rather than
W7AQK/M. So, using the "/M" as a mobile designator wouldn't really be in
conflict with the rules would it? It's being used as a suffix, and not as a
prefix. Maybe that's not a correct interpretation, but I've never heard of
anyone being "dinged" by the FCC for signing "/M" when operating mobile. Of
course, I don't think FCC listens much any more to what goes on in the ham
bands anyway!
Dave W7AQK
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