AM......wrong modulation....

It used to be that the 1X2 callsign indicated someone with many years of experience as a licensed ham. I have never been able to find any data on exactly when the FCC (or FRC) issued the last one of the originals with the W prefix, but it must have been some time about 1930. For years, analogous to the three-letter broadcast station callsigns, they maintained the existing 1X2s in the data base but all newly issued callsigns were the 1X3 format. After WW2, following the pre-War callsign redistricting (when the 10th call district - the "WØ" was created), the FCC acknowledged the significance of the 1X2: a veteran licensee, by allowing any former holder of a 1X2 to request a new one, to be issued sequentially with no preference allowed for a specific suffix, except IIRC that a former holder may have been able to get his old one back if still available. Many of these recipients of replacement 1X2s got a newly issued K prefix instead of a reissued W, as some call districts were running out of available Ws.

As the original holders of 1X2s began to rapidly die off some time in the 60's, and unused 1X2s with the K prefix remained available, unassigned 1X2s began to accumulate, so the FCC decided to make them available once again, to holders of the Extra class ticket who had been licensed for at least 25 years, upon payment of an application fee. Thus the 1X2, with either a W or K prefix, signified a veteran licensee with at least a couple of decades of tenure and the highest level of technical and CW expertise, as reflected by Extra class.

Sometime in the early 70s a group of amateurs began lobbying to eliminate the 25-year rule. I don't recall who they were, but I remember getting a letter from them urging me to join their cause. I tossed it in the trash, but a few years later the FCC informally announced that they were making the 1X2s available to Extra class licensees without the tenure requirement, and that furthermore one could apply for a specific call sign. One could even apply for the 1X2 of his choice, as a secondary call and not lose one's original, and although I may be wrong, I don't remember there being any fee requirement. You simply filled in a Form 610 and dropped it in the mail. Apparently the people at the FCC just wanted to issue the remaining unassigned 1X2s and be done with it. I remember asking one of the FCC guys at a hamfest FCC forum about the apparent conflict between this policy and the letter of the regulations, and he told me to just go ahead and apply for the callsign and not worry about it. Since I was living in MA at the time, I applied for a W1 as a secondary callsign and got the one I requested. But within days of getting the W1, I accepted a job offer in Texas and moved to Houston, so I never used it other than as /5. The bottom line: by then the FCC had downgraded the significance of the 1X2 to amateurs who allegedly possessed above-average skills as reflected by their Extra class ticket, but it was no longer to be a symbol of tenure as a licensee.

Within a couple of years the FCC took a 180° about-face and decreed that amateurs could hold no more than one callsign at a time, and that those with secondary calls, at the end of the licensing term had to choose one of the calls to retain as permanent and let the other expire. This was part of the general overhaul of the callsign system that created the N- and A- amateur prefixes, 2X1s, and allowed amateurs to hold a call sign outside its numerical district. When my time came, I opted to let the re-issued W1 go and kept my original.

With the advent of the volunteer exam system and instant upgrades, it has become possible for an unlicensed person to walk in off the street and come out of a volunteer exam session an hour or so later a licensed Extra class ham. Upon publication of his sequential callsign in the FCC data base, he is eligible for any 1X2 vanity call that is available.

The 1X2 still theoretically signifies an amateur with advanced technical knowledge (no more code requirement), but I even wonder about that when I see Extra class hams, with or without a 1X2 callsign, posting messages on e-Ham and QRZ.com asking for help and advice on how to construct a coax-fed dipole and how long to make each of the legs, or why is it illegal to operate SSB on lower sideband on a frequency right at the bottom edge of the phone band . Basically, the 1X2 is now little more than a briefer callsign, easier to utter on phone and quicker to send in CW, something particularly useful for DXers and contesters.