On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:48:52 GMT, David Kazdan wrote:

It's not quite analagous, but my father was asked by a policeman for his
amateur radio license. Dad, my wife, and I are all licensed and have state of
Ohio issued callplate license plates; it's a specific automobile license plate
category in Ohio and has "amateur radio" embossed below the license plate
number, which is the amateur radio station callsign. I'll guess that it was
intended to permit police to know which cars are likely to have emergency
communication equipment, but it's mostly taken as a cheap vanity plate by the
ham community. Apparently the police request is legal and must be honored; I
don't know if there's actually a penalty for not having the license, and I've
never seen an Ohio law saying that the certificate has to be on the driver's
person. Federal law (FCC regs) do say that the license has to be immediately
available when the licensee is exercising the priveleges of his radio
transmitting license. Dad was incensed, I looked into it a little bit, found
that it happens occasionally, reportedly more in Michigan than in Ohio.


Actually, I'm pretty sure that FCC regs DON'T require you to have
license available when exercising the privledges.

I remember being told that I could exercise my license after seeing my
newly issued callsign in the FCC's online database.