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[[Image:UKTY Call-sign of Russian nuclear icebreaker Arktika.jpg|thumb|Russian [[nuclear icebreaker]] ''[[Arktika-class icebreaker|Arktika]]'' with call sign UKTY]]
Merchant and naval vessels are assigned call signs by their national licensing authorities. In the case of states such as [[Liberia]] or [[Panama]], which are [[flags of convenience]] for ship registration, call signs for larger vessels consist of the national prefix plus three letters (for example, 3LXY, and sometimes followed by a number, i.e. 3LXY2). United States merchant vessels are given call signs beginning with the letters "W" or "K" while US naval ships are assigned call signs beginning with "N". Originally, both ships and broadcast stations were assigned call signs in this series consisting of three or four letters. Ships equipped with Morse code radiotelegraphy, or life boat radio sets,
Leisure craft with VHF radios may not be assigned call signs, in which case the name of the vessel is used instead. Ships in the US still wishing to have a radio license are under [[Federal Communications Commission|FCC]] class SA: "Ship recreational or voluntarily equipped." Those calls follow the land mobile format of the initial letter K or W followed by 1 or 2 letters followed by 3 or 4 numbers (such as KX0983 or WXX0029). [[U.S. Coast Guard]] small boats have a number that is shown on both bows (i.e. port and starboard) in which the first two digits indicate the nominal length of the boat in feet. For example, Coast Guard 47021 refers to the 21st in the series of 47-foot motor lifeboats. The call sign might be abbreviated to the final two or three numbers during operations, for example: ''Coast Guard zero two one''.
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