The Russian Federation is a member of CEPT (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations) which has reciprocal operating authority with the US. The CEPT document outlining operating (http://www.erodocdb.dk/docs/doc98/official/pdf/TR6101.PDF) shows that the call sign prefixes to be used when visiting Russia are:
Russian Federation: R Moscow & Other Regions: R3A St. Petersburg: R1A The document also states: “When transmitting in the visited country the licence holder must use his national call sign preceded by the call sign prefix of the visited country as indicated in Appendices II and IV. The call sign prefix and the national call sign must be separated by the character “/” (telegraphy) or the word “stroke” (telephony).” This manner of identification (location/home call sign)is also specified in the FCC’s rules: 97.119(g) When the station is transmitting under the authority of §97.107 of this part, an indicator consisting of the appropriate letter-numeral designating the station location must be included before the call sign that was issued to the station by the country granting the license. For an amateur service license granted by the Government of Canada, however, the indicator must be included after the call sign. At least once during each intercommunication, the identification announcement must include the geographical location as nearly as possible by city and state, commonwealth or possession (Note: 97.107 = Reciprocal operating authority.) So the net result of this is that if I went to Russia, I would ID as R/K4AC, R3A/K4AC, OR R1A/K4AC- NOT as K4AC/R. Likewise, the only possible suffixes that would conflict with the FCC rules are: KT For a control operator who has requested a license modification from Novice to Technician Class AG For a control operator who has requested a license modification from Novice, Technician or Technician Plus Class to General Class AE For a control operator who has requested a license modification from Novice, Technician, Technician Plus, General, or Advanced Class operator to Amateur Extra Class KP or KH and a number For a Canadian amateur in the US W and a number For a Canadian amateur in the US Since there are no conflicts with an “R” in the suffix, it would be perfectly legal to identify a repeater in the US as K4AC/R. On a side note, it is interesting how many Canadians don’t realize that they should be identifying with the W# after their call instead of before it. Doug K4AC
