Learn how to find and map the locations of Amateur Radio Licensees using the public FCC database and Depiction mapping software.

4. FCC Licensee Data

6. FCC Licensee Data 1. Choose “All” >>>>> <<<<< 4. Choose “50” Matches per page <<<<< 3. Select “Active” to get active licenses <<<<< 2. Enter City, State or Zip Code 5. Click “Search” >>>>>

7. FCC Licensee Data After your list of Active Licensees appears, Click on “Query Download” <<<<< Click “Query Download”

8. FCC Licensee Data Read the information in the “Download Search Results” paragraph <<<<< Enter your email address to be advised when your data file is ready [email_address] <<<<< Click “Download”

9. FCC Licensee Data You will receive two emails from the FCC: Email Number 1:

10. FCC Licensee Data You will receive two emails from the FCC: Email Number 2: ^^^ Click on this link ^^^

11. FCC Licensee Data A pipe “|” delimited listing of FCC license data of different file types appears Right click on the screen and click on “Select All”

12. FCC Licensee Data Right click on the screen again and click on “Copy”

13. FCC Licensee Data Open up a Text editor application such as Notepad and paste the copied data

14. FCC Licensee Data An explanation of the different FCC Data File types can be found by clicking: http://wireless.fcc.gov/uls/data/documentation/pa_ddef38.pdf Data records of File Type “EN” or Entity contain the Licensee information we want Delete all data records beginning with a file type other than EN, then save your file: Let’s name it Local Hams.txt

15. FCC Licensee Data Import the Local Hams.txt file into Excel <<<<< Choose the Data tab <<<<< Select and Click on “From Text”; Browse to the Local Hams.txt file and double click it A Text Import Wizard appears confirming that the imported file is “delimited” Click “Next” >>>>>>>

16. FCC Licensee Data Import the Local Hams.txt file into Excel Uncheck “Tab” >>>>>> Check “Other” >>>>>> <<<<< Type a pipe symbol “|” in the space provided Note how the fields of data in the file convert to columns Click on Finish >>>>>>

17. FCC Licensee Data This spreadsheet now contains all the licensee info for the area selected Each column of data corresponds to the “Position” number for the “EN” Record type as shown on page 3 of the ULS Data File Formats .pdf

18. FCC Licensee Data Insert a new top row and type in the corresponding column headers The column header for each column of data corresponds to the “Position” number for the “EN” Record type as shown on page 3 of the ULS Data File Formats .pdf Of course, you should choose titles for the columns that make sense to you. You may want to “Save” the spreadsheet as an .xls file at this point so you can use it in various applications To import the data into “Depiction” so you can see “where” these Ham Licensees live, you first need to save the file as a Comma Separated Values (csv) or what Excel calls a CSV (Comma delimited) file. Before doing so, you may want to delete the many columns that contain no data or have data you’re not really interested in.

19. FCC Licensee Data Removing extraneous columns leaves a streamlined spreadsheet Save the file using the file type CSV (Comma delimited) and the saved file can be imported into and “mapped” in Depiction

20. FCC Licensee Data Create a depiction of the area likely to contain the licensees you are adding Click on the “Add” tab Select “File” and browse to the .csv file Choose which element (icon) you want to use to represent the licensees Click on the “Add” button

21. FCC Licensee Data Depiction Mapping Software now loads and maps the licensee data Loading (and geo-coding) the data may take a few minutes depending on the number of records in the file (300 in this example). When loading is finished, the Group Information box appears. Depiction automatically created properties for each element to match the column headers in the csv file. Choose which properties and information to show as hover text and click “Apply.” Mouse over any element icon and see the info. Double click on any icon to see all the Properties and information for that licensee.