[aprssig] Canadian APRS operation with a US license

[Bruce Coates]

Hi Michael

Your exactly right on what appending the Canadian regional suffix is 
intended to convey.  It's a method of identifying which province you're 
transmitting from.  It's very common on HF where it's you can't easily tell 
where a signal is originating from and is intended to notify the receiving 
station that the signal is not really coming from the location indicated by 
the operator's call.  It's less common on higher frequencies where DX 
contacts are less common.  Many references say the same for Canadian hams 
operating in the US.  Since US call prefixes no longer correlate with 
specific regions, it has become less meaningful.  It's intended as a 
courtesy but not a strict legal requirement.  When it comes to APRS, 
everyone already knows exactly where you're transmitting from because of 
your position beacon so trying to appending a regional prefix is redundant. 
If you want to keep everyone perfectly happy you can always throw a "Sight 
seeing (or whatever you're doing) in southern Ontario (or wherever you're 
going)" in your status text.

In short, you don't have to change anything.  Just come on up and enjoy the 
country.  In case you're wondering you would still run on 144.390 and most 
of the digipeaters in Canada support WIDEn-n.

73, Bruce
VE5BNC


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Hordijk" <hoffbrinkle at hotmail.com>
To: <aprssig at tapr.org>
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 12:24 PM
Subject: [aprssig] Canadian APRS operation with a US license


> Fairly basic question.  I'm a US operator and US citizen, holding a 
> technician class license.  Are there any special rules for operating in 
> Canada?  I see lots of things like using a callsign followed by a suffix, 
> so N3ZGI/VE3 if I'm operating in Ontario (near as I can figure).
>
> Do these identification requirements apply to APRS operation?  Is it even 
> possible with the current packet format?  Do I need a separate way to 
> identify my station (say a periodic CW broadcast)?  I think that pretty 
> much covers my questions.  What would be required to legally operate in 
> Canada?
>
> - michael
>
>
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