Iowa Amateur Gets Back Lost, Reassigned Call Sign

NEWINGTON, CT, Apr 15, 2004--The Easter Bunny was generous to Bill Sorsby of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Earlier this week, the FCC finally made official the reassignment to him of N5BU, the call sign he'd lost in 2001 as a result of what the FCC has termed "filing errors" in its Universal Licensing System (ULS). Not only did the FCC erroneously cancel the ARRL member's call sign, it compounded the mistake by reassigning it two years later to another amateur. When Sorsby realized some four months ago that his ticket was gone, he immediately contacted the FCC to find out what had happened and to get it back.

"I am glad to see that the FCC has acted," Sorsby told the ARRL. He had held N5BU since 1976.

As the FCC tells it, in December 1999 it received requests to modify the contact information for the amateur license from Sorsby to Dwana C. Peters of Guaranty Title (AGT), the title holder of an aircraft with the call sign 5BU. In the process, AGT also inadvertently also associated its FCC Registration Number (FRN) with Sorsby's N5BU Amateur Radio Service license.

"This appears to have resulted from confusion between the aircraft station call sign and the aircraft's registration marking (or 'N number')," the FCC said in an April 5 Order restoring N5BU to Sorsby. FCC rules (§87.107[a][3]) permit aircraft to identify using the type of aircraft followed by the characters of the registration marking (N number), omitting the letter "N." The Commission uses a similar abbreviated format in its ULS database that also omits the "N."

In July 2001, the aircraft was sold, and AGT had the FCC cancel the license for "5BU" (as aircraft are permitted to identify). In a separate action several months later, AGT requested cancellation of N5BU, effectively canceling Sorsby's amateur license at the same time. When N5BU became available for reassignment under the vanity system two years later, ARRL member David Willard of Ft Smith, Arkansas, filed for it and was granted the call sign last August.

Sorsby says he's been in touch with Willard about the call sign confusion. "Immediately upon being notified by the FCC, he graciously surrendered the call sign and notified me that he had done so," he said. Willard now holds AD5QD. While hashing things out, the FCC earlier this year also assigned Sorsby a new call sign, AC0AC.

Sorsby blames a "security flaw" in the FCC's ULS software for allowing AGT's Peters to "inadvertently corrupt the database records" for his license. "Amazingly," he told ARRL, "the ULS database not only allowed her read/write access to Amateur Service data, it also allowed her entries to commandeer the security portions of the database records as well." He wonders, too, if he's the only victim of such an error that seems restricted to N-prefix call signs such as his.

Sorsby is philosophical about the four months he spent getting N5BU returned to him. "It has been a very time-consuming and frustrating ordeal," he told ARRL. "My consolation for the ordeal is that now I'll have a tall tale to spin for years to come."

To reduce the likelihood of similar problems, ARRL strongly encourages Amateur Service licensees to obtain an FRN via the FCC's Universal Licensing System Web page (click on "REGISTER CORES/CALL SIGN") and then to associate their Amateur Radio call sign with their FRN.

"This prevents other entities from inadvertently making changes to your Amateur Radio license and call sign," said ARRL Regulatory Information Branch Specialist John Hennessee, N1KB, who assisted Sorsby in working with the FCC.

The FCC Order gave no indication that the Commission had modified its ULS software routines to prevent a recurrence of the N5BU situation or that it had any plans to do so.

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