Effort to reinstate Ham Plates

Maine is the only state without legislation for a motor vehicle ham radio callsign plate.  It used to, and now efforts are afoot to reintroduce the measure in 2024.  

This effort is to create legislation to treat the ham radio service similarly to other volunteer services whereas the plate fee is minimal.  Currently a callsign plate as standard vanity plate is possible, but the vanity fee is $25+ per year on top of regular fees.  This initiative proposes a one-time fee of $5.00 when initially obtaining the plates in addition to standard annual registration fees.  

Considering the Maine House and Senate has repeatedly issued joint resolutions "on behalf of the people [they] represent, [for the] opportunity to recognize and acknowledge the accomplishments and public service provided by amateur radio operators," it seems a reasonable time to join every other state with this recognition.

[last page update N1LJK 20240610]

How Can I help?

Proposal Details:

Recent History:

The future:

Additional Information:


Who is behind this effort?  Why K1LX?

Short Answer:  You hopefully!

Long Answer: In 2020 N1LJK considered putting their callsign on their license plate and was surprised to find out Maine had no such program.   Out of frustration this effort was born.  After hearing of MARFs (abandoned) effort and some other chatter on plates on nets, social media, and in person, N1LJK reached out to Senator Tipping who is also and amateur radio operator to ask what happened to the previous legislation (notes above) and consequentially gained their support for this proposal.  

So why K1LX?   On the ARRL list of plates, Maine had a (old/bad) link to the MARF effort which was reposted on the K1LX website.  As a director/member of the club and with their permission N1LJK utilized this website as a place to host this information, rather than just removing the link which has since been updated.

I am a Veteran, will I be able to get my callsign on my plate?

Hopefully. This is all dependent on support in the legislature, but it appears that it could go two routes.  One is that in simplest form your vanity fee would be waived when imprinting the callsign on existing license plate styles.  This wouldn't exclude other fees for specialty vanity plates to support various causes such as Breast Cancer Awareness.   The other direction it could go would be to create a new plate style which could be as simple as the current passenger plate with "Amateur Radio" replacing "Vacation Land."   It could also be an entire new graphical radio style of vanity plate which would depend completely on how much support this gets in the house.   In the second case we'd propose it to encompass the simpler form for veterans or any other public service such as fire/EMS.   Senator Tipping is aware of the dilemma.