Amateur Radio License information

This is a short guide about getting short-term amateur radio clubstation licenses in other countries

Why not using your CEPT license?

CEPT is an agreement to allow invidivuals to use their callsign abroad. Clubstation and contest-callsigns are excluded from this regulation. If you are planning to use a shared callsign in your DXpedition, you have to apply for a local clubstation license.

Is it difficult to get a license?

Short answer: Yes it is. You have to go through national paperwork, which is a quite demanding task, depending on the country you are applying a license for. As it is quite rare that foreign radio amateurs are applying for a local clubstation callsign, most of the application forms will be written in the local language.

Getting a license in Denmark (Last update: January 2017)

Unfortunately it is useless to repeat what we did in 2012 and 2013, because these information is outdated. We applied at the „Erhvervsttyrelsen“, which is the Danish Business Authority.
Apparently, amateur radio licenses are now given out by the „Energistyrelsen“, which is the Danish Energy Acency. Fortunately, the person responsible for amateur radio remains the same, so just send an English or Danish email to Ludmila Slawinska. She will send you the necessary paperwork. In 2012 license fee for a short term clubstation callsign was 341 DKK (~ 46 EUR).

Getting a license in Croatia (Last update: 2016)

Well, it‘s …. complicated. Not even the local authorities seem to be informed pretty well. I will skip the details of my failures. In the end, Emir 9A6AA helped me to get a license. I would recommend asking a Croatian radio amateur about license details.
First step is to apply for an OIB number, which is kind of a personal identification number you need for official paperwork. The OIB number is assigned free of charge.
With you OIB number you will have to request a callsign proposal at the HRS, which is the Croatian amateur radio club. Membership in the HRS is mandatory for getting a license. A callsign proposal is not a valid amateur radio license!
With your callsign proposal you must apply for the actual license document, which is given out by HAKOM. This is where the problem starts. The license fee was about 10 EUR, but it had to be paid in some kind of official state cheques, which is the Croatian way of preventing corruption. They are for sale in every place in Croatia – but not in other countries.

In doubt, the information by HAKOM supersede the information of HRS. An HRS employee told me that the license could be requested online and was valid for one year. None of this was true. Requesting the license was not possible on the HAKOM website and our license was valid for five years. HRS also told me entirely different fees for the HAKOM license.

I am still unsure if our activities in Croatia were legal. Some people told me that a 9A8-callsign can only be used by the applicant – some other people told me it was no problem using this callsign simultaneously in a group. The only thing I can tell for sure is that only the prefix 9A8 is assigned to foreigners.