How to get back your old Ham radio licence.
Abstract: recovery of old Ham radio licence in Australia
Keywords: Ham Licence, recovery, WIA, certificate of recommendation.
It was with considerable sadness that in 1995 I did not renew my Ham licence. There were two little kids and number 3 was yet to
appear
. The excuse was the usual one, the demands of family naturally
overide all other considerations, there was no time left to even look
after my own health, let alone play radios. But time does pass,
and the relentless demands of spouses and children do abate and
children do grow up. Now I have a few usefull shards of time that
are mine.
Things have changed just a little from 1976 when I
first earned and was allocated VK3ZZC. My radio activities were
absolutely restricted
to 6 Meters and all above. The contacts with
other like minded people thus generated fundamentally altered and
directed my life and career. The Ham radio fraternity is a kind of
mafia, it does open doors that are otherwise firmly shut.
It was time to reconnect with my past life and core interest.
The
most significant change in the last 15 years is that in Australia morse
code proficiency is no longer required for access to the short wave
spectrum. The personal computer is ubiquitous and "exotic"
digital modes will focus strongly in my renewed interest. The other
real change is the general absence of signals in the short wave
spectrum, it isnt how I remembered it. The bands are now, in my
suburban setting in Melbournes outer suburbs filled with the garbage of
stray digital radiation. The 27Mhz CB spectrum is now silent. I
certainly dont miss the cacophony that was CB in the seventies. The Sun
has gone all funny. I cannot show real sun spots to the kids. There are
very few short wave broadcasters now. There is allmost no
commercial RTTY actvitiy any more. There is a 137kHz long wave band and
the vague possibility of a 500khz allocation.
Extraordinary !
The
WIA now administers both amatuer certification and callsign
allocation has been outsourced by the ACMA to them as well .
step
one. Find your old Novice, AOLCP or AOCP certificate, the
impressive one that describes how on such and such a day you satisfied
the Minister, or Post-Master General that you know which end of a
hot soldering iron to hold! The key number is the certificate
number.
step two. Go to the WIA web site and get the
request for callsign form. Check with the on line available call
sign database and select two unallocated callsigns that satisfies
your qualification requirements (advanced, standard, foundation
etc ) and personal tastes.
step three. Give a
postal money order for $22 to the wia for your callsign
recommendation certificate. Assuming all is in order, you will
recieve this certificate which is valid for only 10 ten days and quickly submit it to ACMA.
step
four. Go to the ACMA website and download form RO57. There is no
such thing as a Ham licence or amateur radio licence, they are
generic "apparutus licences" and you tick the "recreational use" box.
step
five. using the nice callsign recommendation certificate you just
recieved from the WIA , add that to your correctly filled out RO57 and
include $65 by cheque or better still a postal money order , made out
to the ACMA, they cost just $5 and cannot bounce and will cause no
further delay. Your RO57 form will include the certificate number
of your AOLCP,Novice,AOCP certificate, but include a copy of it just for
good measure, it seems to speed things up.
step
six. hold breath, wait. If all is good, the ACMA will respond in
about 5 working days with your nice new licence. They do have all
your old certifications on record, all they really need is a valid certificate number.
step seven. dont forget to renew it next year! Good DX. Whatever.
What
to do if you cannot locate your old certificate? You need to know
about what location and year you got it. This gives the officials some
hope of finding it in their archives. You need to speak to
the WIA in the first instance, it appears that they may also accept
other legitimate engineering qualifications like degrees, Broadcast
Ops, TVops and others, but may require you to do a regulations
test, but do not take my word for it, the WIA really does want you to
get back on air and will help.
VK3ZZC
this document was created Tue Jun 22 19:32:47 EST 2010
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