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Usually the callsign starts with LA, but why do so many of the LA callsigns end in A?

The callsigns have been distributed with the last letter as the most significant letter, e.g. in this order for the two letter series: LA1AA, LA1BA, LA1CA, …, LA9ZZ. In the 80’s it was necessary to add a third letter and that series started like this: LA1AAA, LA1BAA, LA1CAA, …, LA1ABA, LA1BBA, … As an example LA9KTA was issued last year. With the ‘TA’ we are getting closer to the last one, LA9ZZA, in the series ending in ‘A’ now. Therefore in some years all new radio amateurs will get callsigns ending in B.

We also had an LC license at the same time. That was a no-code VHF/UHF-license. All those callsigns ended with -T for Technician license, e.g. LC3SAT. That series is no longer used and it is not possible to get the old LC callsign back.

There is no vanity callsign system in Norway, but club stations were allowed by the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority to get one of the rare single-letter callsigns that were issued to the very first radio amateurs (up to about the time of the second world war). There are only 26*9 = 234 of these callsigns and one example is LA4O for the Oslo group. But this practice seems to have ended now. It is also possible to inherit a callsign from family as I have done.

There are also a few special callsign series:

• LD: Packet radio repeater nodes for VHF and UHF, e.g. for APRS. An example is LD3GT
• LF: License issued to a company, e.g. LF2E
• LG: Only Norwegian-Swedish station LG5LG in Morokulien
• LN: Club stations may switch to this in some of the major contests, e.g. LA8W – LN8W