Your other callsigns

Most operators are on the air as more than one callsign. The device running this app is N0CALL, the digipeater in the loft is N0CALL-10, and the radio in the car is N0CALL-9. Anyone who writes to one of those other SSIDs is writing to you, but the message lands on a box that has nobody reading it.

Other callsigns tells the app to receive messages addressed to those SSIDs as well, so you can read them and answer them from this device, either in conversations of their own or merged into your station's.

What it is for

• A digipeater or IGate on another box that has no screen and no one at it. People do write to digipeaters, usually to ask whether they are being heard.
• A second radio, such as the one in the car or the one at the club, whose SSID people already know to use.
• An SSID you used to run and have not retired yet, so a message sent to it does not simply vanish.

These are your own callsigns. The list is not a way to read someone else's mail: a message addressed to a callsign that is not yours is not yours to answer.

Where to find it

Radio → Station identity → Other callsigns.

The card lists the callsigns you have added, each marked Acknowledges or Receives only to show what it does, and Add a callsign opens the editor. The editor holds three things:

• Callsign: the SSID to listen for, such as N0CALL-10, or N0CALL-* for every SSID of that call at once. It has to be a callsign the app can listen for, it cannot be your station callsign (messages to that already arrive here), and it cannot be one already on the list.
• Acknowledge messages: the switch below, off by default.
• Merge conversations: whether its messages get conversations of their own or go in your station's. Off by default. See Their conversations.

REMOVE THIS CALLSIGN at the bottom of the editor takes it off the list. The conversations it collected stay where they are; nothing new arrives in them.

Every SSID at once

N0CALL-* covers all of them: N0CALL, N0CALL-1 through N0CALL-15, whichever you have not listed by name. Each message is still filed under the SSID it was actually sent to, so a message to N0CALL-7 gets the as N0CALL-7 conversation and, if acknowledgements are on, an acknowledgement from N0CALL-7. The wildcard's acknowledge switch applies to all of them.

A callsign listed by name wins for its own SSID. N0CALL-* receiving only, with N0CALL-10 listed beside it and acknowledging, is how you read everything and answer for the digipeater alone.

The acknowledge switch, and what off means

APRS messages are acknowledged. The sending station keeps a message in hand, repeats it on a schedule, and stops only when an acknowledgement comes back with the right number. Nothing else ends the retries.

Acknowledge messages off, the default, means the app shows you the message and sends nothing back. That is honest about what happened on the air, and it has a consequence you should expect: the sender's radio carries on retrying, and eventually reports the message as failed, even though you have read it. If that matters, reply; a reply is not an acknowledgement, but it tells the person at the other end that the message arrived.

Acknowledge messages on means this device transmits an acknowledgement as that callsign as soon as the message arrives, which is what stops the retries.

Leave it off while the radio that really owns the callsign is on the air and acknowledging for itself. Two stations answering for one callsign is worse than a message that has to be repeated: the sender gets two acknowledgements for one message, from two places, and neither of you knows the other did it.

What these callsigns never do

An extra callsign only ever receives and, if you switch it on, acknowledges. From this device it never:

• beacons, or appears anywhere on the map;
• digipeats;
• gates anything to or from APRS-IS;
• counts towards your digipeater coverage.

This is the difference between an extra callsign and an extra beacon profile. A beacon profile transmits as another SSID, and puts it on the map. An extra callsign only listens. If you want an SSID to be seen, that is a beacon profile. See Beaconing. If you want an SSID to be reachable, it is this page.

Their conversations

Merge conversations decides where a callsign's messages go. Each callsign on the list has its own switch.

Off, the default: a message to one of your other callsigns gets a conversation of its own in the Messages tab, labelled as N0CALL-10 under the station's callsign. That label is on the thread's header too. Someone who writes to both N0CALL and N0CALL-10 appears twice, once for each. Anything you send from the N0CALL-10 conversation goes out as N0CALL-10, so the other station sees a reply from the callsign they wrote to.

On: the message goes in your station's conversation with that station, so each person has one conversation however many of your callsigns they write to. Where a conversation holds messages to more than one of your callsigns, each run of messages is marked with the callsign it was to (to N0CALL-10) or sent as (as N0CALL-10).

A line above the message box, Sending as N0CALL-10. Change, says which callsign your reply goes out as. It starts as the callsign the other station last wrote to, because that is the reply their radio is waiting for. Tap Change to pick your station callsign or another merged one instead. The choice lasts until you leave the conversation.

Turning the switch on or off moves the messages already on this device, not only new ones. Messages that arrived on your other devices move when those devices pick up the change.

Message as another callsign

In an ordinary conversation, the ⋯ menu at the top right offers Message as N0CALL-10 for each callsign on your list that is not merged. It opens a fresh conversation with the same station under that callsign. The conversation appears in your Messages tab once the first message is sent. For a merged callsign, use the Sending as line instead.

Over APRS-IS

The app asks the APRS-IS server for messages addressed to these callsigns as well as to your station, so nothing extra is needed for them to arrive.

The exception is a filter you wrote yourself. If you have replaced the range filter with your own filter string on the APRS-IS screen, that string is what the server honours, and the app does not edit it. Add a message filter per callsign to it:

g/N0CALL-10

For a wildcard it is two entries, g/N0CALL/N0CALL-*: the bare call and every SSID.

See Connect to APRS-IS for what else a filter string can carry. Over the radio there is nothing to set: the app hears every packet the radio decodes.

It needs Pro

Other callsigns is part of APRS Connect Pro. Without it the card is shown with the Pro notice inside it, nothing is listened for, and nothing is answered. Messages to your station callsign arrive exactly as they always did. See Free and Pro.

Last updated 25 September 2026