1. Presentation

1.1 Definition

"An amateur station is a radio station which participates in a service of individual instruction, intercommunication and technical studies, carried out by duly authorized persons interested in radio technology for purely personal purposes and without pecuniary interest."

This is the wording established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to define the Amateur service, one of the twelve services authorized to use the radio spectrum. As a result, each amateur radio operator is assigned a unique personal call sign, consisting of a nationality prefix followed by different numbers and letters for each, such as F6REF, where F is the prefix for France, and the other characters are specific to the station.