IMPORTANT!! – Associate your FRN with your CORES account!
The following was provided by JD Delancy, W1JD. JD is one of our RAMRODS with the Anchorage VEC. This is a good reminder to all hams with existing licenses. If you don’t associate your FRN to your CORES Username, you won’t be able to renew your license or upgrade your license (among other things) when the time comes….don’t put this off……we are seeing this more frequently lately…don’t get caught in this situation with your amateur license…
Now….from JD…..
We recently had a situation where processing of a new amateur license
came to a stand-still for a former amateur operator re-entering ham
radio after a long lapse
Roughly 15-18 months ago the FCC performed an integration between the
Universal License System (ULS) and CORES (COmmission REgistration
System). All FCC Registration Numbers (FRNs), existing and new, in ULS
are now required to have an association with an FCC CORES username
account. In other words, everyone who has or needs an FRN must
also have an FCC CORES username account. Existing FRN’s did not
automatically link to FCC CORES Username Account. YOU must associate
your existing FRN with FCC CORES Username
What’s the impact? Like the former amateur, they registered for and
successfully tested using their existing FRN. The FRN was not associated
to a CORES username. The application went into limbo after the ULS could
not “tie it” to a CORES username, It happened because they were not aware
of the FCC integration.
There are probably active amateurs who have had an FRN for quite a time
but have not associated their FRN to a CORES username. If you have had an
FRN for some time and do not have, or did not create, an FCC CORES username account when the ULS-CORES integration modifications were announced, the next time you renew, upgrade or modify your license, it will not
completely process. The action will stay in limbo until the situation is
corrected
The FCC will NOT call you to advise of the problem; you must correct it
yourself. If you do not possess a CORES account to associate your FRN with, go to the following link to establish one:
https://apps.fcc.gov/cores/html/Register_New_Account.htm
If you HAVE an FRN and HAVE a CORES account but have NOT YET associated your FRN to your CORES Username, follow this link to find out how to get that done:
https://apps.fcc.gov/cores/html/Associate_Username_to_FRN.htm
What happened with the returning former amateur operator? After a bit of
“Dick Tracy” sleuthing, we found the problem, a CORES account was
established, the FRN was associated to it, and the license was issued the
next day
SUBMITTED by JD Delancy, W1Jd
