[44net] Re: Organization Callsigns (was: Re: Update re: subdomains)

On Sat, Jun 15, 2024 at 12:24 PM Chris via 44net <44net(a)mailman.ampr.org> wrote: Reading between the lines of Rob's post, it sounds like this could be an almost arbitrary number. From a technical perspective, I wonder why there has to be a limit at all? Couldn't this just be done with a join table that maps callsigns to users and/or organizations, using an OID or something to uniquely identify the latter? I know nothing about the structure of the database used by the portal, however, so I freely admit that I'm speculating. What are the use cases for an individual having multiple call signs? I can think of two. First, a user who holds calls from multiple licensing authorities. For example, it's not too uncommon for US amateurs to have callsigns issued by OfCom in the UK, or by the Canadian licensing authorities, etc. I suppose the number someone has is a function of how industrious and how much of a traveler they are. Second, a user who has changed their callsign, either due to a license upgrade or acquisition of a "vanity" callsign. One imagines that the user would like some kind of grace period to transfer things from the old to the new. In any case, I can't imagine there would be too many such callsigns at any given time. A third category bears mentioning: in the US, an individual gets a callsign per _service_; I don't know, but I imagine other countries could do something similar. For example, the FCC gives different call signs for amateur radio and GMRS. But I don't think that's particularly relevant, since AMPRNet is specific to amateur radio, which falls under the umbrella of the amateur service here. I suppose one could want to annotate that in an informational field in the portal ("also licensed as xyz123 on GMRS..."), but I imagine that would fall under a different rubric. Yay! Great. - Dan C.