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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N561, November 24, 2019
WWV 100th Anniversary: The Forgotten Callsigns - 4
It was back in September 1919 that the Department of Commerce in the federal government in Washington, D.C. issued a callsign to the radio station at the National Bureau of Standards, which was also in Washington, D.C. at the time. The three-letter callsign was WWV, and it was not a specially-requested callsign, nor a randomly chosen callsign. Instead, it just happened to be the next available callsign in the three-letter sequence beginning with WWA.
During the past century, this callsign, WWV, has become well known throughout the world for its reliable shortwave signals that provide time and frequency and propagation information on half a dozen specially selected shortwave channels. In addition to the main callsign, WWV, this station has also utilized other special callsigns at its various sequential locations, most of which have been forgotten over the years.
Interestingly, the FCC, which claims no oversight of station WWV, has reserved an additional 10 callsigns in the WWV range for use by NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Boulder, Colorado. These additional callsigns are four-letter callsigns beginning with, as would be expected, WWV. All of these callsigns are listed in the FCC Code of Regulations issued in 2009.
Already, NBS-NIST has utilized three of these additional standard callsigns; WWVB (Boulder), WWVH (Hawaii) and WWVL (Sunset). That leaves an additional seven callsigns that still lie vacant. These unused four-letter callsigns are: WWVC, WWVD, WWVE, WWVF, WWVG, WWVI and WWVS. It would seem that there is no longer any need for the use of any of these still-vacant callsigns.
There are an additional 16 four letter callsigns in the sequence beginning with WWVA, but apparently all of these have been in use previously by mediumwave broadcasting stations in the United States.
A very unusual callsign for the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. is listed in the American radio magazine Radio News for February 1938, on page 505. This unusual callsign was WWY, and it was logged on the equally unusual channel 10100 kHz by International Radio Monitor Clarence M. Myers in the United States. His published logging indicates that he heard callsign WWY on a Friday afternoon in January (1938) at 1:27 pm Eastern Standard Time.
It was in this same month of January (1938) that the licensing agency in the federal government, the FCC, granted approval to Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts to conduct shortwave propagation tests. These shortwave test transmissions were designed to gather data on the amount of reflected power from the ionosphere.
The annual FCC Report for the financial year 1937-1938 stated that the propagation tests conducted by Harvard University were in the same style as the previously-approved tests by both the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., and NBS, the National Bureau of Standards, which was also in Washington, D.C. at the time. The NBS callsign WWY on 10100 kHz was not therefore a transmitter callsign, but rather a convenient, consecutively-issued frequency callsign for WWV.
One of the main special events honoring the 100th anniversary of chronohertz station WWV around the beginning of October was a special set of amateur transmitters on the air under the collective callsign WW0WWV. This station was on the air in several amateur bands on the WWV property in Boulder, Colorado for just a few days.
Not very well known is the fact that NIST gave serious consideration a few years ago to establishing an additional WWVB longwave transmitter somewhere near the east coast of the United States. The current WWVB transmitters on 60 kHz provide only a very low signal in the heavily-populated areas along the American east coast, and there is a need to provide an additional stronger signal.
Several potential sites were investigated, including Greenbury Point in Annapolis (Naval Academy), several retired Loran-C sites (half a dozen or more), and the Voice of America station at Greenville, North Carolina. Finally, a site was chosen at the Redstone Arsenal adjacent to Huntsville in Alabama, but the nearby Marshall Space Flight Center objected on the grounds of radio signal interference, and so the whole project was dropped.
At the time, it was suggested that the additional east coast longwave station would operate not on 60 kHz, but rather on 40 kHz. If the project had come to fruition, maybe there would indeed have been reason after all for the use of one of the seven empty WWV callsigns.
More on the story of the WWV forgotten callsigns next time.