The K deisgnator was used after the W call signs were utalized in the various classes. A and N are also prefixes. The suffix are two or three letters or numbers. Incidently the very early hams did not have a letter designator. My father was 6AY. For example my novice call sign was KA6PKB in 1979. Since I had started cruising with a noice call sign and was communicating with code, I have kept that call sign although I upgraded to General class in 1982. Often hams will keep the same call sign even if they upgrade to a higher skill level because of "name recognition". There are now only three classes of license. Technician, General and Extra. There is no Morris code requirment for the Technician level license. Most Technician operation is in the VHF, UHF and some limited use on 10 meters. However you need at least a General level license to utalize voice networks in the High frequencies where most of the maritine mobile ham nets operate. The current code requirement is only 5 words a minute for general and extra--and most people can lean this in a week or so. The older code requirement was 13 words a minute for general and 21 words a minute for Extra class. The questions are 35 multiple choice for techician, 35 multiple choice for General class and 50 multiple choice for Extra. These questions are taken from a published pool and there are any number of courses which will allow you to pass the test. I advise taking a class at a junior college where you get some radio and electronic theory as well as the propogation. But there are good books or computer programs which will allow you to pass the test in a few weeks study. The Extra class license gives a small amount more of bandwidth which you can use/more than the general class license. A world wide data base of ham call signs is at: http://www.buck.com/cgi-bin/do_hamcall If you look up a call sign it gives a good amount of information and a map to that hams house! If you have a spirious or non U S call sign, most U S and many other net operators will not talk with you. For world wide crusing the Maritme Mobile Service net is a great resource: http://www.mmsn.org/. A good listing of the maritime mobile nets is at: http://www.mayaparadise.com/mmfreq1.htm (note that here are some HF marine SSB nets as well as ham nets. Web site links for the nets are at: http://www.cruiser.co.za/radionet.asp WO7O has some great links on his marine radio page: http://www.toandos.com/bnpage3.html I have found that if you need help or information you can get it quickly on ham radio. Once we were searching for a boat which had gone on the beach in Mexico--I found out that I had wrong co-ordinates and had passed the site of the wreck. When I got the correct co-ordinates, I did a double break on 14, 313, and within 20 minutes a boat which I knew was 100 miles behind me called on a marine SSB fequency and we got aid to the boat in distress. There are numbers of stories of lives and boats saved by ham radio. I think it is something you should not leave home without. Bob Austin