Hi List,

Since people have been joining in on the April 1 fun, I thought I would relate a story from the year of our lard 1971.

Remember a few things:

1.  callsigns were strictly enforced as to district and region;
2.  vanity calls were only a gleam in some FCC bureaucrat's eyes;
3.  there were no double A prefixes, no 2 by 1 or 1 by 2 incentive calls;
4.  in fact I believe all you had for prefixes at that time were w, K, WA, and WB, (might have missed a few like wn or kn but you get the picture; right?)
5.  and of course there were no Internet quick look-ups or readily available DX charts other than those hard copied from such groups as ARRL.

So here it is April 1, 1971, and all up and down the East Coast on 20 Meters, people are hearing the following (or something close to it):

CQ CQ CQ DX this is station KD2UMP transmitting from Squaw Island.

When stations would respond and ask for a more definite location, the station would give them a 5/9 signal report and thank them and then resume calling CQ.
Many people didn't even ask for a more precise location, because (so I was told by old timers) in those days, experienced hams didn't want to appear stupid and so it was considered the sign of a newbie if you would ask for a location.

Well after a couple of hours, people were getting suspicious.  It turns out that the whole thing was a hoax.  Squaw Island is/was a small island in the Buffalo River just outside the city of Buffalo, NY--where of course the city used to land fill much of it's garbage in those days.  I am not totally clear on this, but I believe that the guys who pulled this stunt had gotten a one day permission to run a special callsign station and did not explain just why they wanted to use this precise callsign.

Boy was there a stink (as in garbage--poor pun definitely intended <g>) over that within the local and regional amateur community.  I don't think any FCC action was taken, but I suspect that the guys (2 of whom are long since paying homage in that big DX chamber in the sky) were probably not very welcome at local ham radio events for years to come.


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