Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first use in the United States as the letter “A” for the first letter of Amateur Radio call signs. While the block AAA-ALZ had been assigned for decades to the United States, they had never been used for civilian call signs until January 1, 1976.

In honor of the U.S. Bicentennial, the FCC authorized U.S. amateurs to use special prefixes, starting at the stroke of midnight eastern time. At that point, since I was WB0MEB, I was authorized to use the call AB0MEB for the year. I used the special call a handful of times, but old habits die hard, and I signed my normal call most of the time. The chart shown above, from the January 1976 issue of QST, shows the complete assignments. Those of us with 2×3 call signs wound up with slightly shorter (on CW) calls. Those with older calls wound up with longer special calls, since W’s became AC’s, and K’s became AD’s. So the previous owner of my present call could have signed as AC0IS rather than W0IS.

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